Saw on Twitter from one of the media guys that they weren't even selling tickets for the sections in the turns. It's crazy how attendance has fallen off.
That is nuts. I still enjoy watching it and think the format has even gotten better over the years. Its just falling to pieces for some reason.
It’s not just Bristol, it’s everywhere, except for the Daytona 500. The difference is other tracks can remove seating to make it look better. Bristol can’t do anything.
Yeah, saw a picture of Vegas the other day and was shocked by how small the seating area is there now.
Dooz - you’re the resident expert, and I’m not even a casual fan anymore (I couldn’t name 5 drivers in NASCAR right now - and even they’d all have to be 7-10 year veterans).... I saw a clip on Twitter from some driver who suggested that NASCAR needs to throw out half of its rules, end the exemptions and lucky dogs and just go racing...and I found myself agreeing with him. It might be “better racing”, but honestly, it all just seems to sedate and [ussy pay] now, that I wouldn’t watch a race if they let me drive a car in it. Kill the COT, have basic rules for horsepower / frames and shit, and just let’em race again. What do you think? How do you fix it? Can it be fixed? And what do you predict the next 5-10 years look like for NASCAR?
I'm pretty sure they even bumped up the start of the race a bit to try to get the whole race in before the rain started.
I grew up on racing. Dad went to Talledega for 25+ years. Still get nostalgic hearing it on the radio. Sad to see it has fallen off.
If they did it wasn’t much, because scheduled green flag was around 2:00ish. Anyway, they can’t use the weather excuse anymore. Their spring date is basically hand picked, and I’ve not once been rained out of the night race. And next year they’re going up against college football, so we will see how that goes.
Yeah, they screwed up moving the date of the night race. It will likely be the same day as the UT/UF game. I'd imagine they will take an attendance hit. I won't go back to a night race with it being on a college football weekend.
Attendance is down across the board. There's no denying that. I live close to Talladega and went to almost every race over a ten year period. The campgrounds aren't as full. Tickets are easy to come by. I haven't been to a race in ten years myself. Most folks we camped around toward the end of that period complained that they had made everything too family friendly around the track, and it was true that there were major changes. I imagine there are still parts of the campgrounds where debauchery reigns, but it's a far cry from when I started going the 90s. The new fans seem to have been more fickle than the older ones were. Earnhardt passing was a blow. Jimmy Johnson dominating for years was a blow, and a lot of the newer drivers are just kind of milquetoast. Maybe I just didn't pay a lot of attention, but they just seemed like cookie cutter images of each other. Race ticket prices were obscene at one point. There are a lot of things you can hang your hat on in regard to its decline. Personally, I simply grew tired of going. I knew where to park, could usually scrounge up cheap or free tickets, and could be home in about an hour or less after the race (usually about a 20 minute drive). I just didn't care any more.
Well I’m far from an engine guy, and know even less about aerodynamics, but it seems like if you make the cars harder to drive by increasing HP and reducing downforce, you might actually make the drivers have to drive the cars, work the throttle and save tires. The problem there is that there’s a few guys who are REALLY REALLY good at it. And the rest range from almost REALLY REALLY good to knows somebody that has money. So now they make the cars equal, so to speak, to narrow the talent gap. I think it’s back to being a niche sport like somebody else said. Track don’t release attendance numbers (not that we could believe them) but TV numbers don’t lie. I don’t really know how to fix it at this point. One idea is combining entertainment like concerts and races into one weekend, like some tracks already do. I think a good start would be for NASCAR to admit there’s a problem, because right now it’s obvious there is, despite the drivers, media and officials telling us otherwise.
Well next year it’s the Furman game. And VaTech is away. No clue about WVU. But if it works out they all have home games one year, the place could be vacant.
