Dateline: Daytona Beach, Florida, where we’ve just seen possibly the fieriest, most destructive NASCAR race in recent memory, one where 32 vehicles began the NextEra Energy Resources 250, the season opener for the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series, and fewer than a third of them competitively finished.
Spills! Chills! Where the Chevrolet Silverado leads the most laps — the Silverado pace truck. Ambulances logged plenty of time, too. Beginning with Natalie Decker yanked from her burning truck like a rag doll by her crew, and ending with the plucky crew of the No. 68 Rackley Roofing Chevrolet trying in vain to secure the wayward hood to the truck using massive strips of black BearBond tape, it was a tragicomedy of errors that thoroughly entertained the fans, especially those who like to play destructive video games. Where else could Angela Ruch (nee Cope), niece of Daytona 500 winner Derrick Cope, take home eighth when she finished 30th in her only other truck race — nine years ago?
Not what NASCAR wanted, but maybe what NASCAR needed — enough highlight-reel footage to run for a week even if Saturday's Xfinity and Sunday's Monster Energy races don’t provide it. (They will.)
Especially under former CEO and Chairman Brian France — currently on leave and apparently relieved of his duties as he defends legal charges stemming from a driving-while-intoxicated arrest last summer– NASCAR, desperately wishes it was football. It would love highlights to be the equivalent of Hail Mary passes and heroic dives for the end zone, but sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s crashes. The bigger the better, figure local newscasts.
It is no headline that NASCAR attendance and TV ratings have been better, and there is much moaning and rending of garments, such as Dale Earnhardt, Sr. T-shirts, on the part of the seldom-satisfied fan base. It’s evident on the best daily barometer available, NASCAR Sirius-XM radio, Channel 90, where every third truck driver waxes eloquent-ish about how wonderful things were, and how they need to return to … what, exactly? Races won by three laps? Drivers seriously injured and even killed? There’s an argument to be made that this is the Golden Era of NASCAR racing, when there’s enough BearBond available for all to very nearly re-attach a flailing hood. But maybe more can be done.
Here are some ideas, worth what they cost.
FEEDER SERIES: No one cares about the NASCAR K&N Series, except for the handful of tracks where it runs, and the young up-and-coming drivers who hope someday to drive NASCAR trucks with the hoods actually affixed by nuts and bolts and such.
Similarly, the NASCAR Home Track sanction of your local speedway, like the K&N Series, detracts from the premium image of NASCAR’s top three series.
Now that NASCAR owns the ARCA series, formulate ARCA as the feeder sanction, incorporating ARCA’s own worthy series into K&N and let ARCA, billed as the grassroots division of NASCAR, assume the sanction of local tracks. Reserve the full NASCAR name for Cup, Xfinity and Truck racing. It’s an opportunity for some all-new branding of a tired, predictable product, as well as — drum roll — all-new T-shirts! Treat ARCA and its charges like a business, not a stepchild.
TRUCK SERIES: NASCAR desperately wants new manufacturers in the series, and the easiest place to start is with the Gander Outdoors trucks. Here’s why: Like the main ARCA series, virtually all the trucks are using engines not from Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota, but from Ilmor of Plymouth, Michigan, an offshoot of the British company that built engines for IndyCar and even Formula 1.
These V-8 engines may be based on Chevrolet mechanicals, but the fact that they are branded as Ilmor offers plausible deniability for manufacturers — “No, our Toyota Tundra isn’t powered by a Chevrolet, it’s powered by an Ilmor!” — which is something the doomed ASA series sadly learned when they asked Ford and Dodge and Toyota to run a spec GM-branded engine.
Add to that the fact that in all three of NASCAR’s top series, the key differentiation among the brands are the brand-specific decals of a grille, headlights, taillights and fake side windows.
And add to that the homologation of tough, easy-to-repair composite bodies that are all basically the same, and this opportunity presents itself: Allow any manufacturer to come in using an Ilmor spec engine, brand-relatable decals front and rear and side, and suddenly a car could be a Volkswagen Passat one race, a Mercedes-Benz E-Class the next, a Nissan Altima (or Titan) the next, a Honda Accord (or Ridgeline) the next.
What? These manufacturers don’t offer a pushrod V-8-powered, rear-drive car? Neither do Toyota, Chevrolet or Ford. A stretch? Yes. But how badly does NASCAR want new blood? Make casual entry affordable and They Will Come.
The last two manufacturers to seriously consider NASCAR were Dodge, which decided it was simply too expensive to come back, and Volkswagen, which made a real effort until it was sidelined by Dieselgate. No manufacturer, not even Hyundai, is poised to duplicate what Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota have done, most notably a full engine program.
We ran this idea by the top racing executives at the three participating manufacturers, and they hate the idea of racing against other manufacturers who essentially didn’t pay their dues. But if NASCAR wants more brands, the road exists.
Anyway, about the truck series: It needs a more varied, more national schedule to help it do what it was originally intended to do: Bring NASCAR to unserved areas, where more regional teams have a chance to compete against the established ones. The truck series is the best ambassador NASCAR has, and it needs some help.
XFINITY SERIES: This series is floundering, at least in terms of identity. It seems to be billed almost solely as a minor-league arena seasoning 19-year-olds for Cup racing. It was getting a partial identity with its use of the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, but now that Cup is using those cars, what is the difference, other than 6 inches in length?
This needs NASCAR’s attention and bright ideas more than anything else right now. As it is, Xfinity is just Cup Lite, a distraction from the main show. And one that we’ll be skipping today. The beach calls! And there will be highlights tonight if there are enough crashes.
CUP SERIES: The charter system has not delivered on its promise to bring in many new owners or teams — the charters just seem to shuffle between owners like taxicab medallions in Manhattan. The only interest held by the Twin 150s was which two of the four non-medallion teams would fight there way in: Add at least two more cars to the field of 40 to make this more likely during the rest of the season.
Cut races from miles to kilometers — not new, but now more important than ever. A 500-miler becomes a 500k, which is 311 miles. Another option is to limit races to three- or three-and-a-half hours, plus five green-flag laps.
If NASCAR wants to be football, then have a 30-minute halftime. Five minutes on each end are reserved for TV, while the 20 minutes in the middle are a concert or other event held on a specially designed mobile stage that rolls out to start-finish and is televised on big screens to the rest of the stadium: If fans want to know why they are getting charged the same for a 311-mile race that they were a 500-miler, well, they get a 20-minute quickie Hall & Oates or Alabama or Darius “Hootie” Rucker show, or some other type of premium entertainment.
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