NASCAR has had its ebbs and flows, big times with big audiences and money rolling in, and times like now, where NASCAR is trying to figure out how to stem the downward trend in viewers on TV and in many cases, at the track.
Two tracks have really shown this downward trend in the people attending, Bristol and Indianapolis. If you watch “Hot August Nights”, what they used to call it at Bristol, that was a ticket that was much like getting season tickets to the Green Bay Packers, you had to go on a waiting list, at times three or more years long.
When NASCAR and Indianapolis Motor Speedway came to terms on bringing the top motorsports series in America to, arguably, the most famous race track in the world, for 1994, there was such a buzz about it. The top auto racing series coming to the legendary Indy! I was part of that, I watched as these big, lumbering stock cars worked their way around a course where only IndyCar had dared tread before.
Before you argue that Formula 1 did, remember, they raced on the road course, not the 2.5 mile long rectangle that makes up the “Indy 500” and “Brickyard 400”. Also, NASCAR arrived before Formula 1, which ran for a few years that ended in 2007.
Jeff Gordon won that first race and NASCAR, even before that time, had been seeing their fortunes on the rise, television numbers were up, people were lining up for tickets (remember what I said about the Bristol night race) and tracks began expanding their seating, Bristol up to 160,000, Talladega up to 125,000 and that is just the grandstands.
Well, at Indy, 400,000 stuffed themselves in for the “Indy 500”, but, those numbers include temporary seats. Those seats were not put in for NASCAR, for reasons understood within the racing world as Indianapolis Motor Speedway understands that IndyCar (or whatever name they’ve used in the past) is their bread and butter, and these old moonshiners in “taxi cab” racers aren’t going to put more butts in the stands than our series. OK, that’s fine.
The furor continued as, the next year, Dale Earnhardt wins, and then the other big names claim “Brickyard 400” titles, up to and including home-town/home-state guy Tony Stewart winning two of those races.
Since about 2010 however, the numbers are dying off, and if you watched Sunday, September 8, 2019 and the most recent version of “The Brickyard 400”, you saw a lot of empty seats. Well, Indianapolis has problems, first and foremost being sight lines, but that is true of any series racing on the 2.5 mile rectangle, not just NASCAR.
Even if you sit in say, turn one, you can see the cars coming off turn 4, down the front straight, across the start-finish line, through turn 1 and into turn 2, but, you cannot see the backstretch or turn three. Major problem? Not really, but it is a problem that people talk about.
Also, Indy, being a rectangle, means you have two long straightaways with two short-chutes to combine them. With the holes the Cup cars punch into the air, if you’re out front, you can cruise, but if you’re behind, you are experiencing massive “dirty air” and passing becomes something of a premium, and if NASCAR is known for anything, it is passing.
So, without the passing, what is one to do? Well, the call has been coming for a couple of years now that we need to get out of Indianapolis, and that call seems to be getting louder each year.
I, for one, disagree. While IndyCar and the NHRA are on the rebound, in viewers on television and people at the races, NASCAR still leads the US in motorsports viewers, in both TV and at the race dynamics. Indianapolis is still, with respect to Daytona, the premiere race course in the United States, and the two belong together.
So, what to do? Well, NASCAR is slowing beginning to understand it, and have stated the desire to ensure that the upcoming Generation 7 stock car at least looks a bit more like the car you would buy at your local Chevy, Ford or Toyota dealership. That’s a start.
However, there is no real compelling rivalry, and that may be a bigger problem. When NASCAR first came to the Brickyard, we were coming off a DW vs. Dale rivalry and moving into the Gordon vs. Earnhardt rivalry. Before DW vs. Dale it was DW vs. Bobby Allison, Bobby Allison vs. Richard Petty and the most noted Petty vs. Pearson rivalries to look at and choose sides.
Now, we have the one we can root against…anytime Kyle Busch is announced in pre-race ceremonies, he is roundly booed, at least as lustily as Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and/or any other “black hat” personality in NASCAR had ever been.
But there isn’t that one we all want to root for. We like Chase Elliott, but to create a rivalry in auto sports, or any sport for that matter, when the one we all root against wins, the one we want to root for must win too, and Chase has not answered Kyle punch-for-punch yet. That is what NASCAR needs, not to leave Indy, but to have that driver we all root against, but more importantly the one we all root for.
Do not leave Indy…develop that driver that becomes the answer to Kyle Busch. Kyle Busch, like him or not, is good for NASCAR, but we don’t have his opposite, and that is what is hurting NASCAR, not Indianapolis.