Do Something Different NASCAR

As I watched the F-1 race from Monaco, I thought how cool it would be if NASCAR would run a street racecourse. I can see it now, Kyle Busch battling Dale Jr. on a street near you.

No more cookie cutter racetracks that have the same look and races that all seem so very similar. Yep, I’m convinced it would be a real hit. Much like the old beach course at Daytona before the Daytona International Speedway opened its doors.

I absolutely love road courses, mainly because I use to drive on them back in my youth. I absolutely love Watkins Glen and Sonoma, so how about running Long Beach.

If the boring IRL cars can run there, why doesn’t NASCAR try it? I’ve never cared much for the mile and a half tracks that have popped up all over hell and back. So why don’t we have street courses or at least more road courses?

Is there a rule that dictates what style of racecourse NASCAR must run? By doing something different, I would be energized all over again with NASCAR.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting bored to death watching the same race week after week in NASCAR. The cars look the same, the tracks the same and even the races look the same.

I want to see some kind of shake up or a break away from the organized snooze fest NASCAR is presenting to the racing fan. I just wish they would do something different.

Some readers will be offended with my references to F-1, but they are at least controversial if not exciting. Try knock out qualifying. Oh, wait, sorry they can’t do that. It would screw up their precious 35 rule.

Heaven help NASCAR if a car actually had to qualify for a race. We might miss Dale Jr. or some other popular driver if he happened to be slow that week. We can’t have that, the race is boring enough as it is.

No, boring qualifying nobody watches, or cares about must be left alone. Maybe NASCAR should rename their sanctioning body, BORECAR.

If qualifying can’t be restructured, maybe they could make the cars different from make to make, or team to team. What am I thinking, that wouldn’t work in the toe the line rules NASCAR has today.

Heaven forbid the cars being different and a crew chief that is innovative is quickly sent packing, or at least fined to no end. Just ask Chad Knaus of Jimmie Johnson’s team, or Michael Walthrip’s 2007 crew chief, David Hyder about that.

As NASCAR explains it, “It’s about the driver and not the car.” Now who would have thought we could have an auto racing series that has nothing to do with the car.

It is confusing to me. With all the turmoil with the big three in Detroit, it seems NASCAR would go out of its way to make sure the phrase, “Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday,” actually meant something.

Sorry race fan, the car doesn’t mean anything to NASCAR. I feel so good about that, I think I’ll go look at the new Jeff Gordon model down at the Gordon dealership. It might run better than either of the 2009 Busch models. I just wonder if you can get whitewalls or dual exhaust on any of them.

Hey NASCAR, get a grip people. It is about the cars dummy!  The drivers drive the cars. They don’t race barefoot in their birthday suits with a number stenciled on their backsides. That would be a race between drivers.

So what can NASCAR do? They run on boring tracks, having boring qualifying, and in a boring facsimile of a factory streetcar and they wonder why NASCAR is losing fans.

The big news of the week isn’t about a race team, but about drug testing. Like a race driver is taking performance-enhancing drugs so they can outrun their competition.

I don’t care if a driver is a total pothead so long as he can race on Sunday without killing himself or another driver. Who cares if he took a substance not approved by NASCAR?

These guys drive a car for 500 miles. They don’t have to be in the same shape of a pro football linebacker. He is driving the car, not trying to lift it. Stop taking the focus off the car and making the drivers into something they aren’t.

I have been a fan of NASCAR since I was a kid back in the early sixties. I have stood by NASCAR through thick and thin, and have defended it against fans of other series.

Now with the advent of the COT and the cookie cutter tracks, I’ve lost interest.

NASCAR isn’t the NASCAR I loved all of these years.

Why is NASCAR losing its fan base? It is a combination of bad decisions based on the belief that the fan doesn’t care about the most important part of auto racing. That part is the car itself and when the car is minimized, we lose interest.

I am the original type fan, a gearhead that loves the cars as well as the drivers. I saw the Indy racing series do the same thing by developing a one engine, one chassis, one body racecar and they have lost almost their entire fan base.

NASCAR should take a long hard look at them and see their mistake. Do something different for a change NASCAR. Try to see if you can win the old fans back.