Am I nuts?

NASCAR started out as completely stock cars supposedly straight off the dealer floor.

Today they are racing Vintage cars that nobody actually makes or sells 

Attendance is dropping.  Races that used to be sellouts have whole sections empty. 

Why not go back to their roots. Stock cars off dealers floors. SUV’s are top selling, wouldn’t it be wonderful if NASCAR visited dealers and bought a couple of each brand available with a V8, stripped the interiors out and put in a race seat and fire extinguisher  and let Chevy race Jaguar  Ford race Porsche etc.?  

Might not be that interesting at Daytona or really high speed tracks but road race and 1/4 mile.  

You may be onto something...maybe put some ramps on the course and make it a bit like stadium trucks. Those are lots of fun to watch!

Race on Sunday, sell on Monday. 

I want to see hellcats vs camry vs turbo civic vs twin turbo mustang vs.....

Stock cars. Allow durability and safety upgrades. Full cage. 

Essentially use the 1972 rulebook crossed with the safety sections of the current rule book. 

Absolutely!  If a manufacturer only sells FWD V-6s then they should race them.....but be allowed to take full advantage of technology. 

Funny you would mention jumps, I had just been talking about that idea with someone last week.  Not stadium truck sized but a 6" jump at speed would certainly take out the boring "merry go round" racing and make things more interesting for spectators and vehicle engineers.

Hell yeah.  At this point, what have they got to lose?

While I agree with the expressed sentiment, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it proposed before and be thoroughly rejected for any number of reasons.  Probably the biggest one being the difference in safety between a caged up production car and a bespoke race car made to somehow resemble a mid or full size sedan. 

There are already a number of series using production vehicles that turn both left and right. The key would be to make one of those bigger. 

Either way, the boom in popularity that started 15-20 years ago is over. 

I think it is the same thing is happening to NASCAR as some other sports. With the flood of electronic information in front of our faces at all times we don't have time to sit and watch a 4 hour race. Condense that into a 10-15 minute highlight video I might watch it.

GameboyRMH said:

You may be onto something...maybe put some ramps on the course and make it a bit like stadium trucks. Those are lots of fun to watch!

As a motocross friend of mine sez’ “if it doesn’t have jumps, it isn’t racing”…in terms of safety, I remember a NASCAR driver once commenting that it would be better to move the driver’s position to the center of the car but then the cars would lose their realism; ROFLMFAO!!!

They should make lapped racers drop out.  Like if they are in a lapped position for 10 laps they should have to retire.   All the back markers do is slow down the race and get in the way.  

I'd like to see tire wars with NASCAR.   That would separate the pack.  

The issue with using production chassis is that ANY damage practically requires a new tub. 

That is hugely expensive for teams as they have to basically build a tube frame within the stock chassis.

Now, forcing the use of production body panels hung on a tube frame, with stock drivetrain location and drive, that could be interesting to some, but would be terrible for many of the hardcore.

They would need to throw out a lot their tuning knowledge, etc. so that would be hugely expensive for the teams.

BTW, the current owners of NASCAR are shopping it around for sale.  They want to get out before it collapses.

Hopefully whatever comes out of the coming collapse will be better and won't take their road racing side along with it.

In reply to frenchyd :

In general I would say yes, probably a little bit. But likely no more than the rest of us.

About this topic I would say no, pretty much spot on.

HONESTLY,the ROVAL was the best show all year. 1.5 mile ovals have become boring.  turn them into rovals, bristol martinsville still sell out I think, daytona and Talladega will always be special.  Season is just too damn long. 500 k. is 312 miles that could shorten up the shows. except at the big  3 INDY DEGA  DAYTONA.

MBrian said:

While I agree with the expressed sentiment, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard it proposed before and be thoroughly rejected for any number of reasons.  Probably the biggest one being the difference in safety between a caged up production car and a bespoke race car made to somehow resemble a mid or full size sedan. 

There are already a number of series using production vehicles that turn both left and right. The key would be to make one of those bigger. 

Either way, the boom in popularity that started 15-20 years ago is over. 

My suggestion is to go with stone stock cars (er, vehicles), so instead of + 200 mpg. They are at 120-130? 

The key to that would be for NASCAR to go buy them, remove flammable interior stuff, install required safety gear 

street tires, Automatics,  etc. 

In reply to Stefan :

My thoughts are stone stock as they come off the assembly line. Owned by NASCAR raced  by teams in stock configuration.  

Short races, 10-20 laps 

Ahh, gather 'round kids, it's that time again.  Time for people who never had, and never will watch a NASCAR race tell them how to fix it by making it like any number of existing series that people already aren't watching.  No, Virginia, there is no production car in a stockcar.  A NASCAR stockcar is not based on any current street car but it is very similar to the cars tens of thousands of people race at tracks all over the country.  The fans are familiar with those cars, may watch them at those local tracks when NASCAR isn't in town, or even work on or drive one themselves.  Most of the people involved in the top series' came from these tracks so they may even know and follow people they are familiar with.  Because of this often times the cars are secondary to the fans who likely follow a driver or team that they like.  

There are lots of reasons that attendance and ratings are falling.  Like many sports they've gotten expensive to attend, there is more competition from other forms of entertainment, but of all the people I know that stopped following NASCAR not one of them has said "If only the cars were more like my uncle's Camry"  The shape and features are only there because of manufacturing money.  Once you go to the lower levels the cars become even less recognizable as production cars but remain popular because they are durable, relatively inexpensive to maintain, and easy to fix.  If using a stock, unmodified, production car was what people wanted to watch there are any number of series that fill that need.  Not one of them draws as many spectators as a Cup car making an appearance at a supermarket opening.     

Join us next week when we discuss how the NFL could improve football if they stopped using their hands like the rest of the world.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I usually hit Road America every summer.  

I missed this year and watched the stadium trucks race and jump around Road America on video.  

I am thinking of going next year - very entertaining 

In reply to jharry3 :

Any one who can't maintain a safe speed is force to retire but the let lapped cars continue to go for points.  Cars have come back from laps down to win races, and championships have been decided by lapped cars staying in races.  After the number of injuries in the last tire war I wouldn't expect to see another one.

In reply to Wally :

So your suggestion is to do nothing and watch it die a slow death?

In reply to Pattyo :

That's not my suggestion but no one starts these threads for actual ideas.  Every few months there's a need for someone to start a thread about how those mouth breathing hillbillys call them stock cars when they aren't stock. by page two it devolves a little further until the posters feel superior enough that their cars turn both ways even if it is in a mall parking lot, someone trots out the "Skittles in a toilet" reference and then it dies off.  I'm just trying to help it along.

For actually fixing it GTXVette has the best ideas.  Shorten the races so they are easier to package for TV and short attention spans. Take away most of the second dates unless attendance warranted it or they could do something different like a Roval,  make some of those dates off weeks and give others to different tracks.  Shorten most weekends from three days to two, one in some cases to lower the teams expenses.  Cut the number of franchises so that independent teams and teams for lower divisions could try and run a few races.   There are plenty of things I think would improve things but popping a cage into a stock Camry and calling it a race car isn't one.

96DXCivic wrote: If I want to watch brightly colored shapes going round and round in a circle, I would flush skittles down the toilet.

Copyright by P71, 2008, all rights reserved.

Because I have nothing better to do and I can't sleep I looked about on the Google and would like to wish the beloved Skittles comment a Happy 10th Birthday!! 

Wally said:

Ahh, gather 'round kids, it's that time again.  Time for people who never had, and never will watch a NASCAR race tell them how to fix it by making it like any number of existing series that people already aren't watching.  No, Virginia, there is no production car in a stockcar.  A NASCAR stockcar is not based on any current street car but it is very similar to the cars tens of thousands of people race at tracks all over the country.  The fans are familiar with those cars, may watch them at those local tracks when NASCAR isn't in town, or even work on or drive one themselves.  Most of the people involved in the top series' came from these tracks so they may even know and follow people they are familiar with.  Because of this often times the cars are secondary to the fans who likely follow a driver or team that they like.  

 

There are lots of reasons that attendance and ratings are falling.  Like many sports they've gotten expensive to attend, there is more competition from other forms of entertainment, but of all the people I know that stopped following NASCAR not one of them has said "If only the cars were more like my uncle's Camry"  The shape and features are only there because of manufacturing money.  Once you go to the lower levels the cars become even less recognizable as production cars but remain popular because they are durable, relatively inexpensive to maintain, and easy to fix.  If using a stock, unmodified, production car was what people wanted to watch there are any number of series that fill that need.  Not one of them draws as many spectators as a Cup car making an appearance at a supermarket opening.     

 

Join us next week when we discuss how the NFL could improve football if they stopped using their hands like the rest of the world.

Fielding $250,000 race cars with rules based on the 1970’s versions isn’t working anymore.  You may be right that the expense of attending has gotten too far out of reach and the cost of winning too high but I think it’s because we don’t have any hero’s anymore. 

Hero’s are people like you and I  who start modestly and wind up successful in-spite  of obstacles. Dale Earnhardt, David Pearson, Richard Petty etc.

Right now the buy in to race competitively even at the local track requires an above average income.  Eliminating a vast portion of the population.  

If the series is going to be successful hero’s are needed. 

Then the second part,  It’s got to be something that seems attainable.  “I can do that”.  The idea that kids can imagine themselves doing that.  All kids, any kids, ordinary kids. 

To the point where they drag their parents to local events.  

Yes a close resemblance to something familiar is important.  It’s why Midgets and sprint cars died and Stock car racing grew and flourished.  

Also why it’s dying.  Is there a single piece on a modern stock car that is stock anymore?   So if everything is different why not have them more like Formula 1?  Or Indycar? 

In reply to frenchyd :

Do you have anything, even anecdotal lunchroom chatter to back up your thoughts or are these just random guesses?

I’m not buying the lack of heros who earned their way in. The current top drivers almost all worked their way up from local tracks. Martin Truex Jr is fairly local to me. I raged against his father’s team, and Jr worked his way up through the ranks and worked on the family fishing boat when he wasn’t racing. You don’t have anyone as big as Dale Earnhardt but no sport is experiencing the success they had in the 90s.  It’s certainly bigger now than it was during the days of Petty and Pearson.  Those races weren’t even on television except as heavily cut pieces on Wide World of Sports.    To say today’s drivers didn’t start out the same way is also laughable.  This week’s top ten finishers top ten finishers all started out racing local short tracks and working their way up. 

I don’t see racing at a local circle track being particularly cost prohibitive either. There are 8 tracks within two hours of me that draw good fields every week. Most of these folks are not lawyers or doctors.  My neighbor works in a plumbing supply house and runs twice a week most of the season. There are a number of people from these tracks that have gone on to run in the top two series.  

I don't know where you see sprint cars are dead either. They’re huge in much of the country, and fill the stands here when they come to town. 

Why would making them more like and F1 or IndyCar help? F1 and IndyCar are both far more expensive and in the states are watched by about 600,000 viewers while NASCAR’s falling ratings still amount to about 4 million viewers a week. 

Easy BOY'S. 

OK I also can't afford 100 bucks to watch a cup show.

IN The 90's you could put a new Late model on the track for 50,000,  less if you did it yourself more if you start with nothing, we had a Port City car for 9 to 1 comp. very light , and a LeftHander for big motors. we used those cars for 6-7 years and they paid for Themselves.  Sorta kinda, we took very good care of them and crashed very little.

point is it's not cheep but shouldn't cost 5 million a year to field 1 car,   when David Person won his first cup it was less than 1 million.

25-30 shows a year is plenty,  stop the Time outs  that's B S.

GTXVette said:

point is it's not cheep but shouldn't cost 5 million a year to field 1 car,   when David Person won his first cup it was less than 1 million.

David Pearson won his first championship in 1966.

1million dollars in 1966 is equivalent to 7.95 million in current money. 

Racing at any level has always been a rich man's hobby. That's especially true at the highest levels. But if it took about a million/car in 1966, and it takes 5 mil/car now, it's actually gotten cheaper to field a NASCAR.

D2W said:

I think it is the same thing is happening to NASCAR as some other sports. With the flood of electronic information in front of our faces at all times we don't have time to sit and watch a 4 hour race. Condense that into a 10-15 minute highlight video I might watch it.

I would watch a lot of sports if they did this. A local channel used to do this with the basketball games from a small local college team. They would shorten the game down to an hour and air on sunday morning. I liked watching that. I think a nascar race would work great on an hour of air time. Im not interested in investing four hours in the middle of a sunday afternoon in the summer to watch anything.