In reply to Appleseed :
Door bars
In reply to Appleseed :
Door bars
Wally (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Appleseed :
Door bars
You mean "it doesn't even have doors" bars, don't you? 
I don't watch a lot of NASCAR simply because I don't find it interesting to watch oval racing on TV. I don't think the level of talent required or the technology that goes in to it has anything to do with interest in watching. There are great athletes that compete in figure skating, professional golf, and bowling, but I also find those laborious to try to watch on TV. Road courses, though, I find more interesting, so I'll watch those when I can. It's kind of hard to know who's who and all that, though, since most of the season is on ovals so I don't wind up really knowing any of the drivers or anything, but it's neat to watch them. The durability of the cars makes for a very different style of racing compared to the more delicate prototype cars or open-wheel racers.
But who cares if the cars are tubeframe chassis with no doors? Is it because they're called "stock cars" but they aren't stock cars? Newsflash: things evolve and names don't. When was the last time you spun a round thing on your phone to call someone? I bet you still call it dialing a number, though. So they put a "Camry" sticker on a car that doesn't look like a Camry. Fun - yet slightly disappointing - fact: the car that has a Budweiser sticker doesn't dispense beer. It also looks nothing like a beer can. But keeping them simple with "old" technology and very standardized chassis design means that the teams don't need to spend as much money to go racing. And that means you don't wind up with a 20 car grid where only 4 or 6 of them have any expectation of getting on the podium each race and at least one of them is teetering on bankruptcy and is completely uncompetitive.
But to the point: I think the new cars look pretty cool. I don't know why, but that more forward-placed number is really visually pleasing.
In reply to wae :
That's about the best explanation for it. There are people that care about the name, as every one of these threads goes on to show. If they were stock, production cars, of they didn't go in circles, if they didn't..... then they'd watch them. Yet no one is watching any of the series that already do those things.
I had no idea about the NASCAR cars (NASCARs?) with the asymmetrical bodies or that crazy bent one. Neat stuff, thanks for sharing.
In reply to thatsnowinnebago :
Same here. They look symmetrical on TV. Never dreamed they be bananas. Thats some serious Yunick E36 M3.
How about that exhaust that exits under the driver...
I like the new cars. Hell, that looks better than a stock Camaro. I also really like what Nascar has been doing lately with the dirt race, more road courses, rain, and now the football field. I used to really enjoy Nascar back in the late 90s, and now I'm getting excited again.
I'd like to see more stock appearing bodies just to get some brand differentiation and fan appeal. I watch every NASCAR race on TV, but I can't tell you what brand any particular driver is driving, they're just NASCARs, and I don't have a favourite driver. My first ever pro race was a Trans-Am race at Ste. Jovite in 1970. There was a Ford corner of fans and a Camaro corner, etc and everyone was rabidly cheering on their guy and brand.
thatsnowinnebago said:I had no idea about the NASCAR cars (NASCARs?) with the asymmetrical bodies or that crazy bent one. Neat stuff, thanks for sharing.
Not NASCARs! NASCAR is a sanctioning body not a type, brand or model of car! Calling a NASCAR Cup car a NASCAR is like calling a basket ball an NBA! Sorry, I'm better now...
NASCARcars? Better?
In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
The trouble with this nomenclature is that NASCAR sanctions races with many types of car. Personally I still call them "Winston Cup" cars, but there are a lot of fans today that were not born when that tag went obsolete. APEowner's comment misses the mark because all basket balls are equal, all NASCAR racers are not.
TurnerX19 said:In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
The trouble with this nomenclature is that NASCAR sanctions races with many types of car. Personally I still call them "Winston Cup" cars, but there are a lot of fans today that were not born when that tag went obsolete. APEowner's comment misses the mark because all basket balls are equal, all NASCAR racers are not.
Cup cars for me. I still call the "whatever phone company" next step down cars Grand Nationals, because Busch Grand Nationals.
Probably has something to do with age.
TurnerX19 said:In reply to DeadSkunk (Warren) :
The trouble with this nomenclature is that NASCAR sanctions races with many types of car. Personally I still call them "Winston Cup" cars, but there are a lot of fans today that were not born when that tag went obsolete. APEowner's comment misses the mark because all basket balls are equal, all NASCAR racers are not.
Good point. In my defense all analogies are flawed, some more than others and, all I really know about basketball is that it involves baskets and balls and that there is an NBA. I'd love a better analogy for the next time I have an uncontrollable urge to rant about that.
Glad to see the sport of stock car racing continue to evolve.
I was a fan with my dad back in the 90's but totally fell out around the time Dale died. It was coincidentally about that time NASCAR abandoned the year long championship for a "playoff" format that intended to boost the chances for under performing teams (and their sponsors) at the expense of teams that could perform at a high level all year long.
I don't pretend that's the reason the sport lost 2/3 of its audience thereafter but I do think it was a bad decision.
What's NASCAR?
frenchyd said:VolvoHeretic said:Wally (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to VolvoHeretic :
This set of suggestions comes up in almost every NASCAR thread and I have trouble following the logic. The first question is how adding a right turn to an oval improves them, or how running a road course does? The second question is why the factory silloueutte is more important than keeping the cars relatively evenly matched? There are countless series already giving you what are looking for.
Well... first of all, I have never been on a racetrack but I do know that when you are, you are only racing the guy in front of you and the guy behind you. I don't have cable or satellite tv so the only racing I get to watch is NASCAR, but I would much rather watch European sedan racing which uses real cars that you and I could actually buy, just like NASCAR used to be, hence the name Stock Car Racing. If you just want to drive around in a circle you are going to have to figure out some way of keeping the cars from going too fast and winding up in the grandstands. Restricter plates ruin the competition part of racing and will soon be coming to the shorter tracks so the only alternative would be to cut down on cubic inches (how about unrestricted 260 engines).
If it's too dangerous to take a Mustang, Cameo, or Camry and stick a roll cage in them, then build a standardized frame and add those car's body onto them, or fabricate a body that looks exactly like them. If Chevy can't build a slippery enough body design, then they are at the back of the pack. I don't mind the best team lapping the field if the only alternative is they are always bunched up in a pack. These new cars look like the bastard child between a late model dirt car and a funny car.
I might remind you the power Formula I makes on tiny engines.
So let's use actual stock engines. As in pull it off the assembly line and if it doesn't last the race too bad .
Most manufacturers in Cup racing make a 3.5-3.6l DOHC V6. Just like they used to make 7l V8s and then 5.8l V8s.
That's the new standard "big engine" size, makes sense to me to use that...
OHSCrifle said:I don't pretend that's the reason the sport lost 2/3 of its audience thereafter but I do think it was a bad decision.
I agree. I'm no fan of The Chase or stage racing, but those things came after the drop in popularity. But NASCAR has never been anything close to "pure" racing, they've always tweaked the formula to improve the show, for better or worse.
I do think that it's kind of unfair to compare today's audience to what the sport had 20-25 years ago. NASCAR became kind of an "it" sport in the late 90s to the early 2000s. I personally knew several people who didn't give a single crap about auto racing in general who got way into NASCAR in those days. It was kind of a bubble, so some kind of decline was inevitable. Losing Dale certainly didn't help, but I think you also need to keep in mind that Jeff Gordon was one of the first guys to transcend the sport, he was a national celebrity. NASCAR's peak popularity coincided with his era of dominance.
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