Here’s why NASCAR is losing its fan base
No rants this week, per se, but observations on the State of NASCAR, why my wife doesn’t want me to buy an electric car and letters received about my suggestion of using designated tolls to rescue Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, among other things. First, NASCAR. The NASCAR Monster Energy Cup season is winding down — there are three races remaining — so this is as good a time as any to take a look at why the bloom has come off that rose and why it is going to be almost impossible for it to ever regenerate.
Follow along, because there will be a test later...
When NASCAR first started, you had a bunch of good ol’ boys who worked blue-collar jobs, usually in garages, and got their hands dirty and went racing at local speedways on the weekend and, if they were any good, developed a following.
They got famous because of word of mouth (“Hey, didja hear about that new kid dustin’ ‘em off over at Hickory?”), weekly newspapers like National Speed Sport News (called simply “Speed Sport” and whose Editor’s Notebook by the late Chris Economaki was a Must Read) and magazines like Stock Car Racing. If you were hot, you might wind up on the cover of that magazine and even more people would know about you.
As things progressed, some of those garage mechanics started to win enough money on Friday and Saturday nights that they gave up their day jobs to become full-time racers — guys like Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby and Donnie Allison, Buddy Baker and Benny Parsons. The top of the mountain in NASCAR circles back then was known as the Grand National Division but in 1971, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., then-manufacturer of Winston cigarettes, contracted with NASCAR to become title sponsor and the Winston Cup Series (to be known thereafter as simply “Cup,” regardless of subsequent sponsorships) was born. There was suddenly lots and lots of prize money available and other full-time competitors like Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip joined up to give chase.
And then, in 1979, came flag-to-flag TV coverage of the Daytona 500 and other NASCAR “Cup” races.
This brought even more attention and money to the sport, and school was soon out. Ricky Rudd, Ken Schrader, Geoff Bodine, Rusty Wallace and Trevor Boys were among several dozen drivers whose names became familiar, if not famous.
The one thing, though, that all those racing drivers had in common — Petty, Pearson, Parsons, Bodine, Waltrip, Earnhardt, Wallace and the rest — is that they all started racing on local tracks and created reputations for themselves as hard chargers who were winners. Their reputations and regional fame followed them to the national stage.
And one other thing about NASCAR in those days: The races were open to anybody who could qualify. Yes, you had to be able to prove that you knew what you were doing out there, but if your car passed technical inspection and you could either qualify to race through time trials or qualifying races, you were in. And while some ran their own cars, most were independent contractors who had their expenses paid by their car owner and then split the winnings with the owner, who paid the bills.
Since early in the millennium, however, interest in NASCAR — both at the speedways and on television — has dropped off. In 2006, for instance, more than 19 million people tuned in to watch the Daytona 500 on TV; in 2018, only a little more than nine million watched. And that is for the Indianapolis 500 of stock cars. Weekly races at smaller locales have come off even worse. It is not unusual to see speedway grandstands half empty and only several million will tune in from home. How come? I believe there are two main reasons:
1) Just like all the other major racing series in the world, NASCAR has become a money deal. Translation: the drivers are paying for the pleasure of racing. Not all, of course, but most. No longer do young NASCAR racers start at their local tracks and work their way up. Now, they buy their way in. That doesn’t mean they don’t have talent or aren’t brave. Far from it. But there is a big difference between changing your own spark plugs and battling your way to the front at your local speedway in hopes of catching the attention of a NASCAR car owner and calling up that same NASCAR car owner on the phone and saying two words to him: “How much?”
So NASCAR racing has become just like European formula-car racing and IndyCar racing in North America. It is now an elitist sport because only those who can afford to pay to play need apply. 2) When NASCAR established the franchise system in 2016, the league essentially became a closed shop. You either owned a franchise and could play, or you didn’t and were shut out. No longer could a late-model driver from Syracuse or Spokane get a car and a team together and show up to try to qualify for any of NASCAR’s races. Now, only the economic elite are allowed to enter the Inner Sanctum and if there’s one thing NASCAR used to abhor, it was elitism of any kind.
OK, there are people who will argue that other things were responsible. For instance:
The non-stop promotion of Danica Patrick, as if she was the Second Coming (she wasn’t), turned off a lot of fans;
The playoff system eliminates 25 or more drivers from contention with nearly a third of the season still to go. And abuse of that system, by both sides, angered fans, but they were particularly angry at NASCAR, which once elevated Jeff Gordon to the Chase field when he hadn’t qualified for it. And stage races have also not gone over well with purists.
Affluence. Once upon a time, if the “Cup” series had a weekend off, drivers like Earnhardt Sr. and/or Earnhardt Jr. would go to Disney World and drink beer with NASCAR fans they bumped into in the lineup for It’s A Small World. Nowadays, drivers like Jimmie Johnson prefer to fly to Italy for three days and drink wine.
Or Jeff Gordon, again, living in a Manhattan penthouse with his second wife, a model, instead of in North Carolina, where he lived beside a lake with his first wife, a deeply religious woman who was Born Again.
Last, many drivers have retired — or been shown the door — in recent years (Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth) and even hardcore fans don’t know who people like Ross Chastain are.
Yes, all of those factors might have contributed to the decline of interest in NASCAR,
But, in the end, I think the franchise system and the ridebuying are what did NASCAR in. And it will be pretty hard to turn back the clock on either of those.
That might explain why, despite the denials, the people who are descendents of “Big Bill” France, the man who started it all, are quietly shopping the company around and hoping to get out while the going’s good.
My wife and I were pulling into a parking lot near where we live the other day, and these were my exact words:
“I went to Portugal back in June and drove the all-electric Jaguar I-Pace. I drove the new Nissan Leaf last year in Las Vegas. I was in San Francisco a month ago for the introduction of the Audi E-Tron. They all have range now.” I stopped to take a breath. “I have saved every fuel receipt since the first of the year. I will wait ‘til Jan. 1 to add them up. I think, even though we get great mileage, that I will faint when I see the total. What I’m saying is this: I am seriously thinking about buying an electric car.”
“Why?” replied my wife, in her what-did-I-do-to-deservethis voice.
“You will still have to have two cars,” she said. “One to save the planet when you drive me to work and the other for when you want to go someplace. Try finding a charging station. You have to have a map. Or an app. It’s not like Shell, or Peter-Canada or Esso/ Exxon whose signs stick out like a sore thumb at intersections all over town and out along the 400 highways. Need gas? Hey, look over there.
“And then when you do find a charging station, you will find that they all have EVs plugged in already and you will have to wait for them to unplug. Who knows how long that will take? Then, even if it’s a fast charger, it will take 30 minutes to charge to 80 per cent of capacity. Nobody seems to do any better than that. So your car is supposed to go 400 km between charges, but unless you want to make a day of it, you will only be able to recharge to 320 kms, which is 80 per cent.
“I have friends, and they have an EV and a truck. A Toyota. He’s the only driver in the family. They need the truck to go to their cottage, which is near North Bay, They have two little kids and don’t have a couple of hours to hang around waiting to recharge the car. So all summer the EV is in their driveway on the weekends while they go to the cottage in the truck; all week, the truck is in the driveway while they take the kids to school and go to work in the EV.
“I told them they should sell the truck and rent something when they need it. The husband thinks I’m nuts.”
“I have a feeling,” I continued, “that the oil companies are going to put in charging stations, particularly at their 400-highway service centres.” “And why would they do that?” said my wife. “They don’t have the room. In the summer, you can’t find a place to park in those places now. It would cost them a ton of money to do that, and the return would be what? EV sales have stopped dead in Ontario because there are no more subsidies. And with the government we have now, they aren’t coming back anytime soon, and Ontario is not going to subsidize Shell to put in charging stations beside their gas pumps.
“Still, go ahead and do what you want,” she concluded. “But don’t complain to me when things don’t work out the way you think they should. And trust me: They won’t.”
“OK,” I said. “I won’t get an electric car. Not yet, anyway.”
This has been a slice of life.
I am very fortunate to always receive letters after I write something in the Wheels section. No letters and I think people have stopped reading, which is not good if you are a writer. There are always some in support, and some against. Which is as it should be. If we all agreed on everything all the time, the world would be a very boring place.
Of course, sometimes I put my foot in my mouth, prompting readers like Richard Stoltz to point out the error of my ways and for Sam (Sandy) Fairbairn of Fonthill to write. “You are usually accurate, but not today. Rolling the clocks back to standard time will make mornings brighter but late afternoon darker.” (I had written it would be dark earlier in the morning and then dark again earlier in the afternoon. Oops!) I apologize for that.
John Stillich of Innisfil makes a case for climate change (“trips by car need to be fewer and shorter”) and says that with improved rapid transit and, in particular, the downtown Relief Line, the need for the Gardiner will diminish.
Paul Nielsen of Toronto, meantime, sent me a proposal for a rebuild of the Gardiner between High Park and the Don River that would boast several levels of roads and include bike paths and commercial opportunities plus recreational facilities. It’s more complicated and detailed than that, but I think I’ve caught the essence. He should take it to Mayor John Tory.
We need more thinking like this. The then-premier of Ontario, Bill Davis, in 1971, instead of bowing to the political pressure being brought then by Jane Jacobs, the original NIMBY, and others in downtown Toronto and cancelling the Spadina Expressway outright, should have returned the plan to city planners with the admonition: “Back to the Drawing Board.” I mean, they could have tunnelled into downtown Toronto. Or something. Guys like Paul Nielsen could have shown them the way.
A fellow who lives in the High Park area of Toronto challenged my assertion that those of us in the 905 pay more in property taxes than those who live in the city (we do — and I do, compared to him, although in our case, not by all that much).
Two things to finish off with. To my suggestion that only one thing at a time should be happening at intersections (for instance, traffic and pedestrians should never be moving in an intersection at the same time), Doug Wellard of Stratford wrote: “Your solutions are too reasonable and practical to be implemented by any community.”
And Cecilia Brown (no hometown provided) wrote about my suggestion that everybody wear some sort of reflective clothing or vest when walking to the TTC or GO, or walking your dog, when it’s dark. She wrote:
“You might be interested in these gloves I read about in the Zoomer magazine.” I tapped the link and read about lightweight gloves from RunLites. Each glove features a Velcro pocket that holds an LED Light Unit capable of projecting light up to 35 feet ahead. Thank you, Cecilia!
More info at gorunlites.com