Full Throttle

From time to time a combination of boredom with the current state of being - despite this being arguably the biggest racing weekend of the season - plus a general frustration over what passes as auto racing commentary sends the Half-Vast Staff™ of Full Throttle into full-on assault mode.

Before the assault begins a rule - one that I made-up - and a definition of terms is in order.

They say opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one, however my rule states if your opinion is based on a complete fallacy it ain’t worth much.

For those that don’t author a blog, or spend any time reading them, the commonly used term “Meme” is used throughout the blogosphere and is defined as follows:

Meme - “A pervasive thought or thought pattern that replicates itself via cultural means; a parasitic code, a virus of the mind especially contagious to children and the impressionable.”

With the prerequisites out of the way, let the Meme Hunt begin.

Davis Moulton writing for the Naples Daily News has expressed his opinion on the current state of affairs within NASCAR Nation.

In doing so he’s touches on just about every meme possible that trots itself through many blogs, forums and in this case a MSM outlet.

Moulton starts, “I could be wrong, but… NASCAR is in trouble,” which may or may not be true for a number of reasons but when your rhetoric fails to match reality you start out in the hole:

Attendance is down because of the economy, but ratings are down dramatically. Why? During a time when people have less money, are staying home more and watching more sports than in years, what gives with NASCAR? NASCAR ratings have dropped 50 percent in less than five years. Why?

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, it’s possible he’s using the aggregate of losses over the last few years by adding each years drop with a resulting 50% total loss.

If that’s the case he’s being disingenuous, at best. If not he’s flat-out wrong, Moulton’s entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.

Using the last full season of 2008 as a base the aggregate ratings for the four networks covering the sport was a 4.4 share and a total average audience of 6 million viewers.

Going back to 2004, the first year of the Chase, TV ratings for the four networks averaged a 5.0 share of the audience and 5.4 million viewers on average.

That equates to a five year loss of 50%? Sorry it doesn’t Moulton needs a new abacus, and a new meme.

The drivers have no personality, the cars are identical and there are no rivalries anymore. There’s no hate. No Ford vs. Chevy, Earnhardt vs. Bodine, or Waltrip vs. everybody. Nothing. The sport is one big over-commercialized vanilla wafer.

Moulton hasn’t spent much time looking around has he?

Kyle Busch has gathered a large and vociferous group of haters. I suspect if Jeff Gordon continues his winning ways after a couple down years his special group of “fans” will make their voices heard loud and clear during driver introductions before the year is complete.

And I don’t think I have to dwell on all the hate a divisive comments directed Toyota and Toyota drivers way.

Is NASCAR “over-commercialized?”

Sure it is and for good reason, the advertisers aren’t stupid, NASCAR gives them the biggest bang-for-the-buck. Joyce Julius & Associates research shows Jeff Gordon through the first 10 events leads not only the points table but in on-air mentions of his many sponsors.

And frankly if one desires to make the claim against NASCAR it should be widened to all sports. Is there a single NFL or MLB stadium that’s not named after some corporate entity? There’s a couple, Wrigley Field comes to mind, but other than that they are an endangered species.

Next time you tune into an NFL game pay close attention to the head coach’s headset used to communicate with coaches “upstairs,” that isn’t some worthy charities logo emblazoned on the mic, it’s a full-blown advertisement of a corporate sponsor.

If that isn’t “over-commercialized” I fail to see much difference.

What difference there is, is just a matter of scale, NASCAR provides very large area’s for ad placement where as IndyCar or F1 machines don’t but by any measure are just as “commercial” as the so called “rolling billboards.”

Lets move on to Moulton’s remedies to the apparent sad situation he believes NASCAR is in:

Give me a race that starts every Sunday at 1 p.m. with few exceptions. Fewer cars, 43 is too many, cut back to 36. Fewer races or fewer races at the same tracks. Pocono and New Hampshire are just two of the tracks that do not need two races per year. Add Kentucky and return to North Wilkesboro, that would make for a much better schedule.

I have no argument over the many start times of events, but I will say it can’t be that hard can it? It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to know there’s a 3 hour difference between east and west coast time zones. Yes having event times within the same time zone change is a problem but still, the info is out there and is readily available.

Well he seems to have a solution to “over-commercialization,” lop-off seven race teams and you have less ads. It’s an original thought, but hardly fair or workable.

It’s also not fair to remove an event from NHMS, it remains to be seen how this years event is attended, but the track has sold-out every event even last year when many races played to less than full houses. The fact NHMS is one of only two venues in the north east, Watkins Glen being the other, adds to it’s value.

Two points on Kentucky, 1. the track is what many complain about, another mile-and-a-half cookie cutter why add to what many perceive as a problem already, and 2. you want Kentucky on the schedule tell it to the dimbulbs refusing to drop their sham lawsuit. Burton Smith is perfectly willing to shift a date from one of his tracks.

North Wilkesboro? Shear pipe-dreams fuels that idea. Some venues holding WWE events pack in larger crowds than North Wilkesboro ever did. It’s small and with near zero infrastructure to support any expansion assuming the local politicians would be willing to do so.

Embrace your Southern heritage. You used to be “a bunch of good ol’ boys.” Now you look like a bunch of accountants. SEC football did not run from itself. They treat it the same way they always have. Up until five years ago much of the country looked down their noses from time to time at the SEC. Now they bow. They admire the passion, tradition and pageantry.

What’s wrong with embracing the entire country? More drivers compete in Sprint Cup come from west of the Mississippi than not.

NASCAR is supposed to ignore fans of those drivers and not give them an opportunity to see them race without driving or jetting 2/3rds the way across the country?

It will never happen and shouldn’t, regardless of what Moulton and others of his ilk may believe the west coast is steeped in NASCAR tradition going as far back as the early to mid-fifties at Carrell Speedway (Gardena, CA) and Oakland Stadium (Oakland, CA).

Riverside International Raceway (Riverside, CA) had a long and storied run dating from 1958 until the tracks closure in 1988. A thirty year run is traditional in my book.

Is it time for NASCAR to have their cars return to being stock cars? Imagine if they looked like the ones we could drive off the showroom again? Costs would go down tremendously. “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” might happen again. The races might have more racing and less driving. Dale Junior might win again (crazy talk, I know).

Crazy indeed, why even bring it into the debate then?

This in reality is the crux of the matter. NASCAR no longer is a series for “stock cars,” but when were they ever? A stock car, in the original sense of the term, describes a race car that has not been modified from its original factory configuration.

But when was that? Certainly in the fifties as drivers drove cars off showroom floors, raced in T-Shirts and returned the race cars, in some cases under cover of darkness to hide the damage, to the dealer they originated from.

During the sixties the car looked stock, but were they really? Could John Q. Public walk into a Ford dealership and purchase a ‘63 “sport-roof” edition Galaxie, or a “Max Wedge” 426 in their favorite Belvedere model?

Not hardly, a production run of only 500 was required to meet NASCAR’s homologation rules.

The limit was increased for the 1964 season and “stock” then meant 1000 lucky buyers could get their hands on 426 Hemi’s, SOHC Fords, Dodge Daytona’s, Plymouth Superbirds and Ford Torino “Talladegas” in the late sixties and early seventies.

By the late sixties, even given the loose definition of “stock” the homologation rules provided, a comparison of a race Torino Talladega and one on the showroom floor for John Q. Public was anything but stock. David Pearson’s 1969 Torino Talladega had little in common with “Mr. Public’s” version.

If “tradition” means a customary or characteristic method or manner - I.E. “The winner took a victory lap in the usual track tradition.” - then NASCAR left the “stock car tradition” over forty years ago.

Moulton ends his piece with this: “NASCAR needs to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror. An old mirror. Somewhere between 1989 and 1999. Start looking like that again.”

Ok, lets do that, did a showroom 1992 Thunderbird really look like Lake Speed’s and Donnie Allison’s at Charlotte that year?

Not to my eye, not in the strictest sense.

Moving to his last year, 1999, did the Thunderbirds racing in NASCAR’s top level resemble those on the showroom. Somewhat I would grant if aesthetics is your only criteria, but mechanically, not so much.

Thunderbird Turbo Coupe during the mid- and late 1980s was powered by a turbocharged inline-4 cylinder engine. The Super Coupe sported a supercharged V6.

Very un-NASCAR-like I would suggest.

And a final nail in the coffin of the “eighties were better” meme.

In summation, I’m as old school as it gets. My stock car roots trace back to the late great Benny Parsons and his then teammate Danny Byrd competing in matching 1959 Edsels (’61-’62) at a local dirt short track.

And those two race cars, numbers 09 and 08 respectively, were anything but stock then.

You want “boring,” fine check the stats to when Petty was winning 27 events, or when having only 2-3 cars on the lead lap at the checkered flag was the norm not the exception. For the Chase Haters, what’s better having 12 drivers with a legitimate shot at the title or one or two with ten events remaining in the season? Or worse, having the title won with events still to be run.

NASCAR left the “stock” out of stock cars decades ago no matter what the history revisionists or those that ignore that history want to believe.

Without the sport being “over-commercialized,” and without it’s reach having been expanded beyond the south fans would be complaining their favorite sport/driver/team only being shown on the Idiot Box on time-delay by as much as three weeks.

National sponsors like Lowes, Home Depot and Dupont would have never entered the sport if they had no access to potential customers on the Left Coast. Their presence allows for full, in some cases some would argue, over coverage of the sport.

So just get over it, enjoy what is the most competitive form of racing in North America.

NOTE: The enclosed image is the parade lap at the start of the June 14th, 1970 Falstaff 400 at Riverside International Raceway (RIR). You know, that “non-traditional,” race venue with the 30 years of NASCAR history including 48 Cup events and 25 Busch Series (now Camping World Series) events over the course the series’ ten years at RIR. (1978-88)

The event was won in the decidedly not-available-to-John-Q-Public Plymouth Superbird (unless you were one of the 1000 anointed ones) piloted by Richard Petty.