Kurt Busch says, ‘It’s important to be reaching out to new demographics, new fans, new markets.’
- It’s clear that the future look of NASCAR will continue to veer away from the images of the past.
- After a long period of general decline in attendance and television ratings and a relatively recent uplift, the bywords are change and experimentation.
- Some observers say NASCAR is abandoning its long-time core fans to chase potential new fans who might or might not become steady followers of the sport.
Trying to figure out the face and shape of future NASCAR Cup Series schedules is a bit like playing with a Rubik’s Cube. With one hand. After a few adult beverages.
A street race in Chicago or some other metropolis? Maybe. A return to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum? Seems more than feasible. Races at two tracks—the superspeedway and the old fairgrounds speedway—in Nashville? That’s a work in progress.
More road courses? More short tracks? Dirtier?
The suits in the executive offices know more about the direction of all this than people on the street, but it’s clear that the future look of NASCAR will continue to veer away from the images of the past. After a long period of general decline in attendance and television ratings and a relatively recent uplift, the bywords are change and experimentation.
It followed that this year opened with the Clash at the Coliseum, saw competition in the dirt at Bristol and will see racing at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis, the Circuit of the Americas in Texas, Nashville Superspeedway and Road America.
NASCAR made a stop a Circuit of the Americas in March.
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Reaction to the changes generally has been positive, although more traditional fans have voiced support for the way things were.
Kurt Busch offered a “yes” vote for much of the new landscape.
“I think we made huge improvements last year,” Busch said. “All of the new venues we went to seemed to have that inaugural vibe. The energy level was up with everything that went on in Road America, Nashville. The Indy road course even had that different feel through the garage area.
“It’s important to be reaching out to new demographics, new fans, new markets. That’s a key element. Keeping the variety going is what I would recommend.”
Ty Norris, president of Trackhouse Racing and a long-time auto racing executive, said NASCAR’s trend toward the new and different is critical to the sport’s health.
“The bottom line is for our sport to survive we have to have new markets, new fans, new excitement to bring in new partners,” Norris said. “We cannot survive stealing a sponsor from another team to make ourselves healthy and run them out of business. We have to bring new partners into the industry, period. To do that is going to require us not doing the same thing over and over again.”
To that end, Norris said new racing locations are adding a new energy to the sport.
“The coliseum race sparked what I think is a lot of great young interest in the sport. And now that they have had a chance to watch, they’re staying,” he said. “And the Nashville market. It’s a red-hot market. We should have been there years before. And Road America on the July 4 weekend. We have a new sponsor who went to that race last year and was blown away by the sport. They came with us because of that race.”
Some of the recent changes have been abrupt. The season-opening Clash moved to California after being run every year since 1979 at Daytona International Speedway. Kentucky Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway disappeared from the schedule. Several tracks saw their allotment of annual races drop from two to one. Indianapolis moved its race from the Brickyard’s historic oval to its road course.
“There have been too many changes,” said Brian Truett, a fan from Atlanta. “It’s all been a little too much to keep up with. I like some of the new tracks they’ve gone to, but I don’t want a lot more messing with the schedule.”
Sunday’s second dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway drew mixed reviews, but Fox Sports said more than 4 million viewers watched a portion of the race and that viewership was 28 percent higher than last year’s inaugural BMS dirt race, which was held on Monday because of a weather postponement. BMS announced Tuesday that its spring 2023 race again will be run on dirt.
NASCAR will return to the dirt of Bristol in 2023.
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Some observers say NASCAR is abandoning its long-time core fans, those who wore the T-shirts of Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, David Pearson and Bill Elliott, to chase potential new fans who might or might not become steady followers of the sport.
Norris has better perspective than most in that scenario. For most of a decade, he was the executive vice president of Dale Earnhardt’s now-defunct Cup team and ran operations for Earnhardt, one of the most popular drivers ever.
Norris said older fans are not being pushed to the side “because the racing is what attracted them. And the racing is phenomenal. What’s missing now is more about the car culture itself. People don’t work on their own cars. Kids are more worried about whether a car has Bluetooth or GPS than a Hemi engine. They don’t care about those things.”
Part of the answer, Norris said, is creating an atmosphere for a good time, a concept that obviously involves the racing but also includes ancillary activities.
“Kids know if they had a good time at an event,” he said. “It could be a concert, a race, a football game. They know what a good time feels like. And it feels like this sport is delivering way more of that.”
Don’t be shocked when NASCAR announces more non-traditional stops, like Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, on future schedules.
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As whispers continue about NASCAR’s pursuit of a street race, there are questions about how competitive such an event would be in the normally tight confines of races similar to those run by Formula 1 and IndyCar. The streets of Nashville hosted an IndyCar race last August. The event attracted a huge crowd even though the competition was generally less than compelling.
“I had not seen a racing event like that on the East Coast in my entire life,” Norris said. “It was great what the city did around it and how many things were going on. Chicago, Miami, Nashville, Kansas City—you name a place. When you’re in the city, you’re a part of the city’s lifeblood. I feel like a street race would be a huge shot in the arm.”
Former champion Brad Keselowski, now a team owner in addition to being a driver, isn’t a fan of the street-race possibility.
“I think we have plenty of road course events in our season,” he said. “I think NASCAR is at its best on oval tracks. It’s good to have variety, but I don’t think we need any more road courses, whether they be street or road.”
NASCAR officials seek input from car manufacturers when developing schedules, and it seems likely that the bosses at Toyota, Ford and Chevrolet would embrace a major-city street race, thus putting their vehicles in front of huge potential audiences.
Defending Cup champion Kyle Larson said he would be “cool” with a street-course race. “I think everybody assumes my opinion would be to race dirt every weekend, but no, I don’t think Cup cars should be on dirt. The change I would make is not to race on dirt.”
So the opinions are here, there and everywhere. Like the coming schedules might be.
Keyword: Why NASCAR's Schedule Overhaul Is Not Done Yet