What should NASCAR do with the old Busch Series, now sponsored by Nationwide Insurance?
Something different. Something very different than the Busch Series.
Though television is what brings the bucks into NASCAR, it’s the ticket sales that make money for the race tracks. For that reason, since that first CBS broadcast of the Daytona 500 in 1979, television broadcasts of NASCAR races have always been afterthoughts. The race is not designed for television. Television (...)
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About this time of year, it begins to set in. NASCAR deprivation.
I know. It was only a few mere weeks ago that we’d all had it with Jimmy Johnson, up to about here. (Yes, he really is worse than Jeff Gordon. So much so, in fact, that I’m actually beginning to like Jeff Gordon.)
But this past week the ARCA competitors were practicing at Daytona, and Christmas is almost here, which means SpeedWeeks is almost almost here, so . . .
Hope springs eternal and (...)
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Next year, NASCAR will require that teams use “the Car of Tomorrow” at all races, beginning with February’s Daytona 500. This completes the transformation of the Sprint Cup into a “spec class” racing series, a major departure from the formula for success that brought NASCAR its initial growth.
Can the series survive the transformation?
Certainly, NASCAR is too big to implode overnight. Yet, it seems evident that the major growth in NASCAR attendance and audience is over. (...)
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No sooner does the NASCAR season end with the last race at Homestead this past Sunday and now NASCAR’s already talking about the first race next year, a race which will be the 50th Daytona 500.
The first car across the starting line will, of course, be the pace car and next year it will be this Corvette Z06. That will be the fifth consecutive year it a Corvette has performed that function.
Chevrolet’s General Manager, Ed Peper, had a few kind words for both (...)
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Is Jimmy Johnson, current and – apparently – future NASCAR Cup Champion real Cup champion? One like Petty, or Earnhardt? Or even the man that would, were they counting the same way they did then, be a six-time champion this year: Gordon?
No. Jimmy Johnson is a plastic creature, the epitome of the “racer” in the environment of NASCAR: a mile and a half tri-oval owned by Bruton Smith.
There was a time when winning the Championship counted for something. That was the time during (...)
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