Lowe's Is Dumping Jimmie Johnson

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Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
Don't forget the demographics that did attend NASCAR races are now getting older and just stay home and watch on TV.

The younger generation of people are not interested in cars going around a track and a caution for stupid things like for tires.
They want to see import drifting and drag racing events. For me I like F1 and LeMans style racing with various cars on the same track.

I think you hit it. I feel the same way. I was deep in to Nascar racing from the early 80's. A group of us would go to 3-4 races a year, camp out, pickup cheap tickets from scalpers outside the track. It was a low cost 3 day outing with buddies, lots of beer drinking and girl watching. Great way to unwind from our high tech high stress jobs. Heck, I live in Charlotte, CMS is just 12 miles over there from my house. Sometimes friend/relatives would come down and sleep on the floor in our family room. Times change, we all got older a couple have died, racing has got really expensive. What used to be fun is now hard work. When I retired, my priorities changed. I lost the need to get away. My closest friend got divorced and moved back to NY. Now I'm just too old.

Life happens......
 
When NASCAR started putting FWD bodies on the racing chassis it started to get irrelevant. And they haven't run anything close to what you could buy in forever. Maybe that's the word for NASCAR; irrelevant.
 
NASCAR has lost sight of its fan base. They think they are too smart and the answer to everything is determined at a board meeting at some resort among the rich and famous and that answer is more rules and regulations. They know how everything should be and the fans and the teams will just have to accept it all, they are NASCAR and they know. They have added to the famous phrase, "Gentlemen start your engines". Now it's "Gentlemen start your engines, and may the driver with the best fuel mileage win, but only if he follows the rules and remembers all his sponsor's names when interviewed on the victory platform".
 
Originally Posted By: mightymousetech
Well, the bodies on the cars can pretty much be swapped between any of them, so why even bother giving them a name.


TRUE, but the Nippon Giant gets, and TAKES the 'cred" (IF there is any still to be had), when their boy Pee Wee Herman is in Victory Lane, same as the others.

They also need MORE road courses, maybe even STREET courses to be interesting.
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There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER
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that ONE of the Pocono events could not be held using the infield ROAD course, ALL of which can be seen from the stands, or a high mounted TV camera!!
 
NASCAR began it’s death spiral the year following Alan Kulwiki’s championship win. It all started when Goodyear colluded with NASCAR to muscle Hoosier Tire out of the Cup Series. All teams on Goodyear tires, give me a break.
 
Originally Posted By: Pike51
NASCAR is crazy expensive now. And there really isn't anything stock about a stock car.

I'd definitely agree with the second sentence. As to the first, I'd say ask Gene Haas if he still thinks NASCAR is expensive. He's gained a very new perspective as to what expensive really is.
 
They should have a $20,000 claim for any top 10 car after the race is over. Blown engines after the finish will disqualify you for prize money or points. You would see 100's of cars attempting to qualify for 40 spots. Imagine how the engineering would have to change for cost purposes. The racing would be unreal.
 
Everyone is complaining about NASCAR but no one has an idea of how to fix it, and neither do I.

I think that one factor that may have hurt racing is the increased safety of the cars. Danger has always been a part of motor racing and when the specter of death is reduced so is the excitement. You can watch the cars drive 200 mph while touching each other and it's "meh".

No I don't root for the crashes, and I've seen racing crashes in person that are terrifying to the point of making me want to find another spectator hobby, but when the danger is removed racing becomes track and field.
 
Originally Posted By: billt460
Well today I bought a brand new 2018 Toyota Camry. So at least now I can root for the pace car!
I don't care who you are, that there's funny.
 
I think overall NASCAR has become way too expensive. News came out through a lawsuit last year that Farmer's Insurance was paying Hendrick $660,000 per race to sponsor Kasey Kahne in the 5 car. They have said the budget for a Cup team is in the range of $30,000,000 a year per car. Unfortunately cost cutting is hard to enforce once you have opened the box.

The now standard Paoli pit guns are $40,000 per year to rent which is a lot cheaper than the money teams were spending making their own pit guns. Brad Daugherty said on his SiriusXM show they had a $500,000 budget for pit guns last year.

The Xfinity series is using flange fit bodies from Five Star this year at all the non plate tracks. The initial investment is higher however the teams will save money in the long run by not having to do an excessive amount of body work mounting bodies to chassis.

The main challenge is showing value to the sponsors and ROI. Lowes obviously felt this was a good time to exit the series. Outback has stated that when the first started doing the free Bloomin' Onion deal the first week it was in effect they made more money on increased sales than their sponsorship cost for the season. Having a single primary sponsor on a car all season is increasingly rare.
 
Nascar is looking more and more like the IROC series and we all know how successful that series was, even with the best drivers from around the world competing against each other. IMO, bring the cars back to resemble the mid to late 70's, even the early 80's look. No more crazy spoilers and wings or bumped out fenders, unless the production cars came that way. Those cars were going faster 35-40 years ago at Daytona and Talladega, even without all the "body work" and they didn't get airborne often. Maybe put on a narrower tire with less spoiler size, they can still go fast but MUST slow down to be able to handle the turns. The rule where if you can't fix your car within a certain time limit, then Nascar will make you park it, that one right there would tend to scare away sponsors(having loads of money on a car and it is sitting in the garage, with no tv coverage). What dumba$$ thought of this rule and didn't see the potential effects of a wreck or a simple part failure that could be replaced and the car could still race and have tv coverage for his sponsor. I do not know how to fix the broken system, but they better do something quick.
 
Billt460 you have no sense
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About rooting for the Camry. That was funny.

Just messing with ya
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Reasons for NASCAR decline
Not in any particular order

#1 Cost of tickets and hotels and motels... Rooma that went for $80 go up to over $200 with a minimum 2-3 night stay.... And let's be honest... $1000-$1200 is a lot of money still to a lot of people in this country.

#2 Economy fall in 2007-08. Which contrary to recent news... Is not all that magically better... It's not. Same formula being used that got our country into the mess we had before in 2007-08... Watch and see. Stupid.

#3 Cars are not real at all.. A Camry..?? Fast?? Not in the real world... Hey I have a novel concept... How about a Dodge demon on the tracks... Or a Ford GT 350?? The manufacturersake some very fast cars.... Get them out there.. novel concept.

#4 Lack of danger... Good, bad or indifferent but you and I are in far more danger just driving to the track than those guys out there in those cars... Another member posted this reality. And it was and is true. When you take the Daredevil nature out of something.... It becomes like golf, a slow baseball game, bowling, watching paint dry, watching grass grow. I remember Larry Mc Reynolds saying something about this 6-7 years ago. He said maybe we are talking about "how safe these cars are too much"... Which he was exactly right about that. When I drive down interstate 64 or 95 and it is far more dangerous than those guys going around the track... That is just not very good in my opinion.

#5 NASCAR forgot about WHO their fanbase really was.. They traded regular people generally in the south... And took Wall Street's BIG money and thought they could turn suburban mom and dad's children into NASCAR fans. It did work for awhile... But these people were casual fans at best... And casual fans eventually don't hang around....

#6 This ties into the reason above but is different to a degree. NASCAR took Wall Street money from large corporations... These large corporations bought A LOT of tickets... Handed them out to their store managers, district store managers, and division store managers... And these "fans" were casual fans at best.... As long as FREE tickets were being handed out like FREE candy... "Ahh yeah why not I will go to a race".. When after the 2006-09 large economic down turn and those free tickets dried up... Those people we're not interested in paying for the tickets... Not to return.. either.

#7 Stupid and I mean STUPID track owners who stopped allowing camping in the infields at a lot of the tracks... Go back and watch those NASCAR races from the 70s, 80s and 90s... Tell me what you see... A lot and I mean A WHOLE LOT of people with campers, regular tents, and buses in the infields... At Atlanta, Charlotte, Daytona, even Richmond, North Wilkesboro... Dover had a whole bunch of land that had campers on it when I went there... Bet it's gone now.. Tremendously stupid... That made going to a race FAR FAR cheaper for the average fans... Take that away... Try to force them to pay $200-300 a night for a decent room... And Viola... Bye bye regular fans... There used to be a old blue school bus at the exit of turn 2 in Charlotte motor speedway. Darell Waltrip mentioned it when it was still there in 2001-02. Well that disappeared. And shortly after it disappeared.. so did the fans at Charlotte. Not a surprise.

#8 Current drivers are way, way over paid multi millionaires.. Though they are not making the money that was made prior to 2006. But they are not easily relatable to the regular fans. And that matters. People used to feel they could relate to Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliot, Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Harry Gant etc. Also access to the drivers used to really very easy. Walk around the infields around the track and you could easily meet them. When the "special" pit pass garbage started... You knew that these drivers were "special" so that they should be roped off and no easy access to them was to be allowed... And that was not a good thing in the long run.

#9 NASCAR acting like big brother government... And enacting WAY and I mean WAY too many stupid rules. To make things "equal". And that over time led to NASCAR being turned into the IROC series. No innovation allowed. That was dumb as well.

#10 The chase being started... NASCAR wanted to turn the sport into NFL, NBA or baseball. A game 7 moment was what they started chasing after. And yet the real fans did not care about the "fake" made up drama. If real DRAMA happened then it means a lot more. Like the end of the 1992 seaaon race at Atlanta. No made up drama there. It just worked out that way naturally. A great race between Allan Kulwicki and Bill Elliot. Bill won the race but not the championship. He lost by 10 points. If Bill had run much better at North Wilkesboro a few weeks earlier he would have won that championship. Or any other number of different events throughout that year could have made the difference. So... That meant EVERY race mattered back then. Now they really don't.

I hate to say this but I see where NASCAR is going to go the way of boxing... Being totally irrelevant. I remember when many people would have easily would have known who the heavyweight champion was. For the past close to 20 years almost no one would know who it was. And let us remember that the UFC took it's place.

I see where the Street Outlaws kind of deal might be able to fill this vacuum. Drivers easily accessible?? Yeah. Drivers seem like regular everyday people?? Yes. No stupid governing body like NASCAR regulating the cars to the inth degree to make them equal??? Check. A lot of those cars look like real fast cars?? Yep. There is something to what those guys are doing. And if they are wise and smart... They will be able to get NASCAR fans, IRL fans and NHRA fans to show up and watch them race. Has long as they stick to the basics. And learn from NASCAR's failures.
 
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Wow bbhero! Well summed up. I'll add that in the 80's and 90's A chevy/ford looked like the body style sold in the showroom. Bringing in toyota was a mistake. A stock car was a rwd carburated 350cid/351cidv-8. Toyota never had a carbed 350 v-8 car in the 80's 90's. Now that they are FI i suppose its ok, but nascar lost more fan base than they gained.

I like when you could tell a ford/chevy apart based on the body style, as it conformed within a certain percentage of what was in the showroom. Now the only difference are the decals. Fords would have their year, design changes, chevy would have the better downforce for year and so on. It started going downhill with restrictor plates.

Not to mention the silly points race now.

Nascar is now like the WWF. I'm not even convinced the outcomes are not predetermined. I miss the races of the 80's 90's.
 
Originally Posted By: JamesBond
Everyone is complaining about NASCAR but no one has an idea of how to fix it, and neither do I.

I can't say I have a clue, either, but do see a few things wrong. It being almost a spec series has already been addressed here. Getting away from all ovals would help, at least in my view. It would get my interest. I do understand that ovals mean a wonderful way to televise everything and get everyone's eyeballs on all the action and maximise that crowd capacity. It doesn't help if no one comes, though, and that's the boredom issue.
 
Bryan France managed the track in Tucson in the early 1980's when it was a well attended dirt track. He constantly messed with the drivers and cars trying to control the out come of races. He lost the fan base and attendance went to zip. Racers would tow to Phoenix and else where to race and fans found other things to do.
It appears he was in training for his current job. I don't know how much money daddy Bill poured into his failing effort but it was considerable. My wife worked for a tobacco company at the time and they allowed her to spend a considerable amount in sponsorship for the track and racers. She finally got tired of the self-centered jerk and spent the money elsewhere.
I predicted he would be involved in the down fall of NASCAR.

YMMV

Smoky
 
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