NASCAR: It’s Not Just for Good Ol’ Boys

The past few weeks I’ve been watching a lot of NASCAR. Now I’ve been a racing fan for a while, but it’s been a long time since I’ve consistently planted myself on the couch and watched entire races. Lately I’ve been doing that, and I’m not sure if it’s laziness, a string of cool races, drama on the track or what.


It probably started with a string of cool races when I made to sure to catch both road courses, which by far feature some of the best racing (and prove to the rest of the world that the NASCAR boys can turn both left and right). Then there were a number of night races, including the high-banked, half-mile, 160,000-capacity Bristol (imagine putting Hotwheels cars in an ice cream dish and spinning ’em around), California and tonight’s race at Richmond. Night races are probably the best because the cars sparkle under the lights and you can see all manner of sparks and flames coming off the cars in the darkness.

But I think what really captured my attention the past few weeks was the on-track drama. NASCAR instituted a new points system this year. Basically for the first 26 races drivers rack up points like normal. But after the 26th race (tonight’s race at Richmond) only the top ten drivers in points are eligible for the championship (there’s also a 400 point rule where anyone within 400 points of the leader, regardless of the top 10, is eligible, but that didn’t come into play). They also redistribute points, spreading out the top ten teams by 5 points each (so a total of 50 points separate number 1 from 10, as opposed to more than 400 before tonight). From that point on the top 10 teams have a 10-race shoot out for the championship.

The goal is to put a lot more emphasis on the final races and increase NASCAR’s TV ratings going into a heavy fall against the NFL and the World Series. It seems like a silly reason to jumble things around, but what’s done is done. If such a system were used in the past, it would have changed half of the NASCAR champions since 1975.

It also made the cut off at race number 26 incredibly dramatic. For the past several weeks I’ve been following my longtime favorite driver, Mark Martin, as he struggled to make it into the top 10 (yes, and you can make all the jokes you like about his title sponsor, Viagra). He’s had an amazing career, finishing second place in the championship standings an amazing four times (1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002). In 16 years of racing in NASCAR’s top league he’s had an amazing 13 top 10 finishes in the championship standings, with an average finish of 5.8 (by way of comparison, Dale Earnhardt has an average season finish of 4.5 and Jeff Gordon has a 4.6). Yet Martin’s never won a championship. And when this year’s points toss up is applied to history, it still doesn’t give Martin a championship that could have been.

Last week Martin pulled out a great finish at California to get back in the top 10 (though you’d have to go farther back than California for the full story) and tonight he performed well enough to keep that spot (currently he’s 8th in points).

Listening to the post-race interviews has been interesting, as tonight Martin said this is the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life. He’s definitely an older veteran in a field of younger drivers (at 45 he’s got 12 years on the next youngest driver).

I know I’m eager to see how the next 10 races play out. It’s like a championship series, except every other team is still in contention for the win each week. But the championship is another story.

With my recent interest in NASCAR I’ve been hoping to find a fun NASCAR blog, but I haven’t found one yet. With all their sponsorships, I think NASCAR should look into expanding into the tech realm a bit more and make some one like Blogger or TypePad the Official Blog of NASCAR. How cool would that be? OK, maybe I’m the only who think so.

Maybe Monkey Outta Nowhere should consider a sponsorship. I’d love to see my monkey on the hood of a racecar. Or maybe: “Monkey Outta Nowhere, the Official Content Provider of NASCAR.” Wonder if that would fit in my marketing budget?

Update 8/22/2005: I finally broke down and started that NASCAR blog, NASCAR Napper.

5 thoughts on “NASCAR: It’s Not Just for Good Ol’ Boys”

  1. Yeah, Steve, cuz I need more blogs to work on. Let’s see…

    Thoughts
    Monkey Outta Nowhere
    Quotables
    ReViews
    Creative Juice
    Church Marketing Sucks

    How to make your small business fail: spend all day writing blogs.

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  3. Hi ! I just wanted to give you a website http://www.soundandspeed2006.com/ This is Suntrust/Nextel’s big charity event that benefits Victory Junction and the Country Music Hall of Fame. There will be bunches of NASCAR guys and their garages. Be sure to enter the contest for free tickets to the concert.

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