Nascar is arguably America’s Sport of the masses. However, it is slipping in popularity every day. My wife and I used to have season tickets to several tracks and attended 6 too 7 Cup races a year. Now we don’t even watch the races live! We have a collection of street versions of the 1969/70 Aero Cars and still have a love of racing but why have we changed what and where we watch racing? What has happened to Nascar?
I don’t pretend to know all the answers but I have a pretty good idea where things went wrong. It has been said that if you want to know where you are going you better know where you have been. As race fans, if we want to know why fans no longer crowd into the stands at Nascar races any more maybe we should take a look back and see why the sport grew in the first place.
Today’s stock cars have only a very small resemblance to the cars we buy from the dealership; race teams are now multi-car, multi-million dollar businesses; rules and regulations have made the sport almost a spec racer series and all the small vendors at the races have disappeared along with the team souvenir trucks. The sport is so “slicked” up it has lost its personality.
Brian France may not like the old school of Nascar and its fans but his father and grand father knew how to build an empire. King Brian may be making more money but he is killing the proverbial “Golden Goose”.
Today we are starting a three part series “American Stock: The Golden Era of Nascar”. These are long videos but believe me once you start watching you will not stop. There is a lot of really good history of racing in these. I hope you enjoy them and learn from them.
https://youtu.be/QtGs8WOXxT0
