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Why thank you sir.



Oh, and Randy LaJoie too. Those two would certainly provide plenty of entertainment just by trying to beat the shit out of each other.

Personally, I'd like to see the teams be required to put the actual bodies of the cars onto the chassis, with the doors welded shut and whatnot. If a car's supposed to be a Buick Regal, or a Toyota Camry, or a Chevy Impala, or a Ford Fusion, or a Dodge Charger, it should actually have the bodies of those cars, if that makes sense. No stickers or bullshit like that. The only thing the cars should be allowed to run from there should be small spoilers, but that's it. Let the manufacturers better the cars. It wouldn't be a be-all end-all, but it'd be a start.

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-Joe.
Atlanta United FC | Cincinnati Reds | Atlanta Falcons | Tennessee Titans

Why don't you look at the rest of the post?

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If you screw up while skydiving, you have the rest of your life to figure out how to fix it.

I don't know one goddamn thing about the technical aspects of a car, but I also know there is not one fucking difference between any of the cars except the engine. And that is just BAD for racing.

Because I've read enough other posts to get what you are saying.

That makes perfect sense. There shouldn't even be some kind of set number of manufacturers before the season starts or anything like that. If you want to show up with something other than a Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet or Dodge, go for it!

There's no reason you can't have a safe race car underneath a street car body.

Bad for racing in all series except for one: IROC.

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If you screw up while skydiving, you have the rest of your life to figure out how to fix it.

I asked my old man about the USAC rear engine sprint car thing cause he followed sprint car racing heavily back then. He laughed and said it was mainly because most of the owners didn't want to spend the money to buy new cars and what not. He also said many of those fans back then did not like change (like present day). So I imagine it came down to cost of development and worried that the fans would shit on it.

And really IROC kinda sucked its last several years to be honest. When everyone's running the same speed on each part of the racetrack, it's almost impossible to pass.

From the program of the 2009 Bailey's 300 at Martinsville Speedway.


Bailey's sponsored a bunch of big Late Model races in VA and NC and at least 10 different drivers, and now most don't have any sponsorship.

IMO, the only NASCAR races that are worth making an effort to watch anymore are the regional series like the K&N Pro Series and Whelen Modifieds.

The first post of this thread sums up the state of NASCAR in a nutshell. I've been watching NASCAR since 1995 and it's really tough to get excited for almost all the races now (except Daytona and Talladega). With how the sport is being run today, it's really killed whatever enthusiasm I have for it.

Might was well start paying more attention to IndyCar, F1, ARCA, and NHRA.

I would have never known what Bailey's was. I have never seen any of those cigarette brands in my life.

The thing I like about ARCA is that if they do something, I can typically email an official or somebody and ask why, and I can typically get a response back. I also know that they did hear my opinion on whatever the subject is. Now thankfully, I haven't had to do that, but the ARCA guys aren't in their own little deluded world like Brian France is.

I'm still planning on attending 7 ARCA events this year..maybe even an eighth or ninth race, who knows.

I know you've all spoken a lot about the fans already, but I think that instead of actually listening to the fans and trying to accommodate as best they can, I actually think NASCAR as a whole has lost touch with what the fans want. Yes, they have made some positive moves to please the fans exactly as they wanted (double file restarts and the new GWC rules). But the Chase and now this new points system, in my view at least, are perfect examples of NASCAR just flat out misunderstanding or paying no attention to the fans' complaints. I would start by making a point about the Chase, but I really can't figure out why the fuck that even happened to begin with. Kenseth was FAR from the first driver to have clinched the title before the final race. But for the new points system, I think it's just a short-sighted knee-jerk reaction. Yes, there has been plenty of frustration from the fans about the points system in recent years, but I can't recall anyone saying they were confused about how any of it actually works. All NASCAR really did was just change the point values. You still get more points than the guy that's behind you and fewer than the guy that's ahead of you. And all the new change to the Chase is going to do is make it theoretically possible for the 20th place driver after race 26 to end up winning the championship two months later. That's worse than it already was.

But back to my original point about NASCAR losing touch. I was listening to Sirius Speedway last Thursday on the way to dinner when a caller to the show started heaping praise on Brian France for these new changes (which were obviously just strong rumors at the time). Dave Moody (who I normally respect, even when I do disagree with him) made the point that France and the officials weren't just making these decisions on their own and heaping them on the teams without asking for their input. He said that he knew for a fact that they actually were going around from shop to shop and talking to the owners and drivers about things to get their input. I believe that's completely true, but to me that just says that it's not just NASCAR the company, but its competitors have ALSO lost a fair amount of understanding of the fans. It's almost as if these changes are just token gestures to say, "hey look, we listened to you all and changed it!"

Also, if you notice, the only change fans are complaining about are the ones they didn't ask for. Nobody asked for the Chase and nobody complained about system being tragically flawed before 2004.

Then again, so is "NASCAR DIED WHEN EARNHARDT DIED".

To Be Fair, I don't think we'd have the COT if it wasn't for him.

The REAL reason why the COT was created was because Nascar wanted spec-style racing to create an IROC-effect as a desperate move to make the racing more interesting (and provide more "entertainment"). The safety thing was tacked onto the COT because you can't hate something that makes things safer thus its existance is "justisfied" in the sport despite its an ugly POS and was poorly developed/planned.

All the charm and intrigue of NASCAR has been sucked out of it.

I used to be able to say I liked at least half of the drivers in the field. Guys like Schrader, Mikey Waltrip, Park, Trickle, Benson, Marlin, Rudd, etc were genuinely good people who you cared about and wanted to see do well. Now these guys have been replaced with either unlikeable assheads like Hamlin, Edwards and Bowyer, generic young guys who lack any shred of personality like David Ragan, Regan Smith or Reed Sorenson, or unlikeable open wheel hacks like Speed, Allmendinger, Hornish and anyone else who has tried to do the switch not named Juan Pablo Montoya.

Basically NASCAR was the kid in high school who wasn't quite the coolest person in the world but was still quite popular who decides he wants to be something else and ends up with nobody liking him.

Fear. They didn't really understand what they had and were afraid that the rear engine sprints would obsolete all the other cars. They were far superior to the front engine cars. Same reason that rear engine SuperModifieds and DIRT Modifieds were banned.

As for NASCAR... I agree with what was said in the last page. Open the rule book and read the damn thing. It used to say that to be allowed to race a car had to be a production front engine (V8), 2 door, rear drive vehicle. The last one of these was the 1997 Ford Thunderbird. Bring back the stock car part.

Money money money... The TV deal started this fiasco. Before that, the tracks negotiated individual contracts. The broadcaster had no overall influence on the product being presented because they only dealt with a single (or a group of, SMI, etc.) entity of that product. Now, the broadcasters deal with the overall controlling interest, and because of that, have influence over what is being presented. I would wager a lot of these retarded rules to enhance the "show" are directly linked to what the broadcasters want.

And they've got just as many issues as the bigger series, with much less wiggle-room to work with.