As NASCAR has evolved, there has been a never-ending chase for the next big thing that will draw in the casual audience.
We’ve had different formats for the championship to try to shake things up and keep one person from running away with the championship.
They proceeded to revise that format several times when the dominance wouldn’t go away to the point that the whole format was thrown out and replaced to put an emphasis on winning at all costs, culminating in a one-race championship finale in an effort to capture the excitement of that “Game Seven” moment.
If you zoom in a bit, they’ve done the same to the individual races.
From trying a caution clock in the lower series to eventually settling on the stage racing format we have now, this has prevented races from getting strung out for better or worse.
What has arguably changed the most is how the Cup Series drivers race at the “plate” tracks of Daytona, Talladega, and the reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway.
These races have the cars restricted to under 500 horsepower in an effort to keep speeds down as they can approach speeds of well over 200 miles per hour without these restrictions in place given the wide-open nature of these tracks.
This is done in an effort to curb insane accidents like Ryan Newman’s horrific crash in 2020 and Ryan Preece’s turbulent tumble in 2023. Despite their best efforts, we saw Preece flip again this past weekend at Daytona.
Safety innovations to try to slow the cars down have had an adverse effect on the racing product. With the cars being slower and more planted, it’s become harder to pass and harder to build runs to pass.
A direct result of these innovations is harsh bump drafting that has become the best way for drivers to build momentum in these pack races. An unfortunate side effect of bump drafting is that these massive bumps are harder to control, leading to more wrecks. But, that in itself isn’t the biggest problem.
When you take all of what I listed above and combine it with a field full of drivers that haven’t raced in NASCAR when winning wasn’t above the drivers’ own mortality, you arrive at the sport’s biggest issue.
With only 8 of the 36 current full-time Cup drivers driving full-time before the last format change in 2014, the etiquette and mannerisms of old continue to shrink.
When drivers would make boneheaded moves in years gone by, they would be reprimanded by either NASCAR themselves or by the other drivers in the garage.
Compare that to today, and those moves are not only accepted but celebrated.
It’s no longer about who makes the right moves to win the race; it’s about who capitalizes on the low-percentage moves of others and reaps the benefits.
All of this culminates Into a sport that no longer feels like a sport.
NASCAR feels closer to sports entertainment entities like the WWE, AEW, TNA, and other promotions that have predetermined matches, which are very entertaining on their own and have a very special place in my life.
However, I don’t watch NASCAR to see what I can tune into any night through the week.
I don’t want to be “sports entertained” on Sundays. I want the best drivers in the world to race each other with respect. I want the winner to come through because of the moves they made to be in position to win the race. I don’t want to see the seventh-place car win because the top-6 cars all wreck each other.
I shout this Into the aether as a plea to a sport that I believe has jumped the shark.
You can still make the changes via format, car, officiating and/or etiquette to reverse course and bring this great sport back to its glory that made it what a pop culture phenomenon at its peak.
This isn’t to drag the sport down. I am hoping to be a catalyst for change that lifts this sport back up because I know it can be everything I want it to be and more.
Photo Credit: Nadia Zomorodian/News-Journal
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