Power to the people!

The French stormed the Bastille. The Russians revolted in the streets.

The NASCAR Nation took to the Internet.

The theme for this years NASCAR preseason has been ‘we’ve listened to the fans’. Wings on the COT? Gone, replaced with the old fashioned spoilers. More consistent start times? Check. Less rule enforcement, ala bump draft to your hearts content? Done. Or as NASCAR’s vice-president of competition Robin Pemberton so eloquently put it:

“We will put it back in the hands of the drivers and we will say boys, have at it and have a good time.”

According to NASAR all the changes came after they met with drivers, and team owners on a one on one basis. And with fans who were members of a 12,000 member strong council.

No doubt NASCAR also perused the Internet message boards where many fans hang out. With shouts of ‘boring’, when talking about the racing in 2009, overriding everything else.

All will most likely welcome the changes for 2010, but one question still remains: how did NASCAR get to this point to begin with?

It didn’t seem all that long ago that NASCAR’s product, the racing on the track, never drew a cross comment, except maybe from drivers who had been taken out on the last lap. But as the sports popularity grew, it seems that it may have strayed.

I was fortunate enough several years ago, before he went to the superspeedway in the sky, to be in a reporter’s scrum with Bill France Jr. Although he had handed the reins over to his son Brian, France Jr. could still hold court and when he began talking everyone listened.

While the actual tape has been lost long ago, to paraphrase one thing he said was that at the time, NASCAR was still climbing to the top. The sport had yet to reach its pinnacle. He admitted that it would never be the most popular sport in America, but it still had room to grow. The trick he said was to know when they had reached that pinnacle.

Looking back on the last few years, one has to wonder if maybe NASCAR had reached its pinnacle, and actually fallen off. It seems that several years ago, that maybe NASCAR lost sight of the product on the track and became more focused on the product off the track.

High-dollar sponsors were catered too, while drivers were held in check so as not to offend any part of those sponsors demographic. Television contracts were debated, negotiated and the old start times gave way to start times that would fit more into advertisers projections and less into viewers old habits.

Meanwhile drivers became smiling PR speaking machines that became so vanilla that it seemed as if they stood still too long they might melt. And while no one could ever argue against the changes made for safety’s sake, the restrictions put on the drivers on and off the track turned a once shiny, edgy product into a dull shell of what it once was.

And maybe it finally have caught up with them.

The shouts of ‘boring’ grew to a steady roar, TV ratings dropped and even drivers began to grumble.

To NASCAR’s credit though, they have heard the masses and are willing to make changes.

Less rules, start times more consistent with the old and changes to the next generation racecar that will make the new old, again.

Did NASCAR reach its pinnacle and go one step too far, as Bill France Jr. had talked about? Perhaps. But one thing’s for certain, NASCAR isn’t afraid to change and while only time will tell if the changes they made for this season will be the right ones, the fans have spoken, NASCAR has listened, and if it works the top of the pinnacle may be back in reach once more.

Power to the people...
 

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