This race was so boring that even Kyle Petty in the broadcast booth felt compelled to comment, "this hasn't been the most exciting race".
Tony Stewart led a single line parade of cars around the track for most of the day. No one ever came close to passing him, despite a few restarts at the end of the race. Matt Kenseth was able to get to his bumper briefly, but the old aero-push quickly dropped him further back.
Stewart did his patented fence climb after the victory. Patented, even though it was completely stolen from Helio Castroneves. And who cares, except Stewart often makes a big deal of how he "did it first" (in Nascar). What I wouldn't pay for a structurally unsound chain link fence one day.
The horrible racing action points out one of Nascar's recent problems. In recent years, Nascar had the bright idea to try to expand as much as possible, as fast as possible, into the far reaches of the US.
The thinking went something like this: Gee, we have thousands of potential race fans in Texas/Kansas/Chicago/California/Phoenix, let's build a giant track that will accomodate 100,000 fans. More fans = More popularity = More money.
So we had sellouts in Texas, then we got two races in Texas, bringing about 200,000 fans to the races. Nascar was gushing over how great this was. Similar stories in all the other tracks I mentioned including Chicago. All these tracks are large wide ovals.
In Nascar's obsession with stuffing paying fans into large oval tracks, they took races away from Rockingham, and a race away from Darlington.
Then, a funny thing happened. Nascar totally forgot about the TV viewers. The racing at those cookie cutter ovals is godawfully boring. There is rarely passing, rarely exciting action, it's mostly follow the leader races like Chicago this week. Any new viewers of Nascar who tuned in to watch the Chicago race would probably not be eager to ever watch another race. There are too many tracks like that on the schedule now.
The fans in attendence may enjoy their experience, but the fans watching on TV are extremely bored, and they are turning off the Nascar broadcasts in record numbers. Rockingham never drew large crowds, but the racing was awesome and unique to watch on TV. There was action, passing, tire strategy, all day long. Same with Darlington.
In today's climate, a track like Rockingham could never be built. Martinsville could never be built. Bristol, the shrine to Nascar action, could never be built. The formula for today's tracks is to find a giant city, and build 2 mile tri-oval near it.
Although you get 100,000 attending a race, you are turning off millions of TV viewers from watching these races on generic tracks. When I check the TV schedule and see the race is from Kansas, I start thinking of what else I could be doing that afternoon. When it's Bristol, Martinsville, or Darlington, I clear my calendar.
How to fix things? Take a race away from Texas. Take one or both away from Pocono. Any cookie cutter track can only handle one race a year, if that. Give a race back to Rockingham. Find other exciting tracks to run. Mandate that any new track have something interesting or unique about it, whether that is a short track, or progressive banking, anything.
The more fans you draw to TV broadcasts, the more fans will seek out a way to attend a race. Bore the TV audience, and you'll soon be left with 100,000 seat grandstands that are mostly empty.
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