When I was a kid in Montgomery, Alabama, my dad took me to the Montgomery International Speedway on Saturday nights to watch men like Donnie and Bobby Allison race Red Farmer and maybe some shade-tree mechanics from Prattville or Wetumpka or guys from local garages and car dealers or maybe former moonshiners. There I saw the visceral core of authentic American competition in brutal action without the slick, corporate polish. There was no “car of the future.” There was a dented car from the recent past with a huge engine and a homemade paint job. The cars were not yet homogenized into Stepfordish monotony. The vehicles looked like what your mom and dad drove – a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler. The men who drove these bored-out, double-barreled V8’s were hardly spokesperson material.It was not always pretty. There was blood mixed with grease and oil. The drivers had personalities that were hard to tame. Sometimes they would pull over, crawl out the window and trade pop knots up side each other’s heads right on the edge of the track while the other drivers dodged them. As a kid, this was the coolest sport I could imagine.
The smell of beer, bourbon and burning rubber mixed with cigarettes and gasoline to form the aroma of stock car racing while Hank Williams’ nasal voice crooned through the cheap speakers on creosote poles under the insected lights.
It was not something big corporations wanted to be associated with. It was Southern and local and skirted the edge of danger. Have you ever seen a man beat another man using a cowboy boot held by the bootstraps? It was like a honkytonk with wheels. People went home bruised and happy and couldn’t wait to heal up and come back next week.
There was a time when NASCAR was just stock car racing. Then one day the image was more important than the racing. Some one saw the potential and turned stock cars into NASCAR. The powers that be organized and corporatized the sport until it was thousands of smiling, happy logos going in circles. In an effort to turn stock car racing into a national sport, they sanded off the rough edges that attracted a lot of the fans.
It worked for a long time, too. They cleaned up the drivers and the cars and the tracks and big companies signed on the painted line and TV poured millions into it. Ginormous ovals in Texas and California replaced old school legends like Rockingham. NASCAR boomed for many years.
Then something happened. No one could put their finger on the exact thing. People began to drift away. Fans tired of squeaky clean spokesperson drivers with no personality driving unrealistic cars in circles. Maybe they missed the mavericks who gave the sport its soul. It had kept growing like a novelty song on the charts. And then one day, the music died on the last lap of Daytona.
Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR’s Michael Jordan, hit the wall and died and a pall settled over the sport. It seemed like NASCAR hit that wall even harder as fans began to drift away and change started to settle in.
“When you sell your soul, what do you have left?” said a racing fan friend of mine who followed the sport religiously for years until Earnhardt died. “I woke up one day and it just seemed so commercialized. I have started watching UFC. They skip the racing and go straight for the fight. It’s not so perfect.”
He’s not alone. Recent stories show that more and more fans are leaving the racetrack for other pastimes. NASCAR is finally noticing. They are trying to reconnect with the lost base. They are trying to de-program some of the android drivers who towed the company line. They don’t seem to mind a little fight now and then. The clean image isn’t putting hard-working butts in seats anymore. TV viewership is down. Merchandise sales are down.
So what do the fans say?
“Who wants to watch robots driving in circles?” asked a mom in Mechanicsville, VA (a hotbed of NASCAR fans). “We want to see real people who haven’t been molded into some slick image. I like my sports with a little spice. The best thing to happen to NASCAR in years was when Stewart and Busch got into that fight.”
“Let’s see more of that!” said a man in his early 20’s who follows NASCAR sporadically. “I’ll pay to see a sports that has some balls. It seemed like it was scripted for years, like some reality show. Say something outrageous. Smack some guy in the nose. Do something spontaneous.”
“NASCAR needs to not be afraid to rethink the things that aren’t working,” said a Richmond, VA fan. “Lose the plastic face and give us something real, some emotion. We’re not afraid to see human beings act like real people. Hell, I’d love to see them go back to racing pure, jacked up stock cars just like you or I can buy from the local car dealer.”
“Where are the African American drivers?” asked a woman in Glen Allen, VA. “Hispanic drivers, even? There are a lot of hard working, blue collar fans out there who aren’t white who just might save NASCAR – if they felt a part of it. NASCAR needs a Tiger Woods.”
“If they don’t find someone to replace Dale, then they’re going to have a tough time,” said a fan in Alabama. “You need to realize that this is just a bunch of people driving round and round. If those people aren’t interesting; if they don’t get people fired up; if the drivers all seem like they came off an assembly line somewhere – then I just don’t know what’s going to come of it.”
“This isn’t about getting back to their base of hard-core fans,” said a fan from rural Virginia. “This is about something more basic. NASCAR needs to put the human element back in the sport. Forget the car of the future; I want to see the driver of the future.”
Maybe that driver will be like the ones I use to watch as a kid in Montgomery, flaws and all.
Tags: Cars, Famous People, NASCAR, Richmond, South, Virginia