[media-credit name=”Kirk Schroll” align=”alignright” width=”285″]
[/media-credit]Why have the NASCAR races lately been so boring? NASCAR has been shooting themselves in the foot since the implementation of the COT for 16 races during the 2007 season. The racing has simply not been exciting for the fans this season. TV ratings are down along with attendance. This doesn’t have anything to do with the economy anymore. It is clearly the quality of the races. The economy does have an impact, but the quality of racing is making a bigger impact.
TNT did an amazing job at Daytona with the side-by-side commercials. Now, why wouldn’t they do that this weekend? TV ratings went up a lot from that race!!!! Did they just assume that because Daytona was so good that that same people would automatically follow? That may be true to an extent, but after about 20-30 laps of action at New Hampshire, I think most of those new fans either went to sleep or switched to baseball. NASCAR has ultimately made the cars so identical that the racing is just really awful. I’m very sad that I have to make so many entries like this, but that’s just the way that it is!
There was no need for the COT. The head and neck restraint plus the addition of the HANS device was absolutely fine. There will always be injuries in this sport. Eric McClure got hurt in the COT racing at Talladega in the Nationwide Series. Dario Franchitti was injured at Talladega in 2008 in the Nationwide Series as well. What was the main reason behind the COT? Dale Earnhardt. If Dale Earnhardt did not die at the Daytona 500 back in 2001, you can expect that nothing would have changed. NASCAR didn’t consider the COT after the deaths of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin. Those drivers weren’t as important to NASCAR as Earnhardt. Naturally, NASCAR didn’t want to see a death of a superstar later down the road, which resulted in the COT.
Earnhardt’s seat belt was not installed properly during that race. That is what resulted in the blunt force trauma when his head slammed into the steering wheel. The crash was not all that hard. However; when your seat belt isn’t installed properly, you can expect a pretty hard hit when physics wins the game. NASCAR has damaged its reputation so bad that those fans that have left might never come back. NASCAR brought back the pack racing at Daytona and Talladega. Cool. Now, NASCAR is complaining that the fans are disloyal for dissing the two-car tandems and the pack racing.
Earth to NASCAR! The fans aren’t the problem. You guys are the problem. The two-car tangos were becoming a royal bore! This isn’t the same pack racing. The style of pack racing we have now involves having to watch your temperatures constantly in order to win the race. We did not have this problem as much as we are having it now with the new package. Something needs to be done with this! Do you fans remember the AMP Energy 500 race from 2009 and how terribly boring the action was? NASCAR required the drivers to not draft while in the turns. That is the problem with the new package. When you are in that turn, you have to not draft in there a lot of the time because of the problems with the temperatures.
Is it possible for NASCAR to revert to the old way? The Chase system needs to go! The COT needs to go! A lot of things need to go! NASCAR is turning into a $50.00 per ticket car show for all of the fans. Can we go back to the day where all the Chevrolet’s were Chevrolet’s and all the Fords were Fords? That would honestly make NASCAR a million times better!
Here is a test for race fans. Do you remember who won the fall Texas spring race in 2010? Do you remember who won at Chicagoland in 2009? Ok, did any of you have to think a little to figure that out? That means that the race wasn’t all that meaningful. Now, what about the 1999 Daytona 500 or the 2000 Cracker Barrel 500? For those of us who watched NASCAR then we could say Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt in the blink of an eye. Why? Those races will always be remembered for how exciting the ENTIRE race was.
NASCAR needs to return to those days! NASCAR used my 1-43 points system that I implemented in my fantasy league starting in 2007, please take my advice on this.
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