Bringing Back the Excitement – One Fan’s Ideas
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12/21/2016 Frank Buhrman |
In my last couple of articles, I’ve advocated bringing Grand National/Cup/Monster NASCAR racing back to its short track roots with midweek events at “classic” tracks, and I’ve suggested holding indoor races in December. While I’m not banking on having the Daytona suits take a serious look at either of those ideas, I think they have merit if touring series NASCAR racing is going to reverse its slide, and with that in mind, I’m going to devote a few more articles this winter to other perhaps oddball ways we can bring back a NASCAR with a bright future.
Caveats:
1. These are all “outside the (current) box,” even though most have quite a bit of “retro” in them.
2. The Chase isn’t going away, so I’m not suggesting anything that would be at odds with a playoff-style championship scenario.
I’m just looking for ways fans – young and old – can recapture the excitement an admittedly much smaller number of us felt a couple of decades ago – or even longer, in my case.
Part 1 – A matter of colors
When I attended my first Grand National race, I bought a copy of the old Racing Pictorial magazine, which had color pictures of most of the NASCAR regulars posing with their cars at Daytona before the 500, and – surprise! – most of the cars they were running at Richmond looked the same, except that they had screens bolted onto the front of their cars for protection from big pieces of clay, metal, rubber or whatever.
(DIGRESSION – Some of that stuff buried in a dirt/clay racing surface was capable of splitting your radiator, so I guess half a century ago, instead of splitters on the front end, we had anti-splitters.)
My point is that I quickly learned how to spot a Petty car or a Wood Brothers car or a Bud Moore/Joe Weatherly car or a Fred Lorenzen car (or – much later – a Dale Earnhardt or Rusty Wallace car) by what it looked like.
Caveats:
1. These are all “outside the (current) box,” even though most have quite a bit of “retro” in them.
2. The Chase isn’t going away, so I’m not suggesting anything that would be at odds with a playoff-style championship scenario.
I’m just looking for ways fans – young and old – can recapture the excitement an admittedly much smaller number of us felt a couple of decades ago – or even longer, in my case.
Part 1 – A matter of colors
When I attended my first Grand National race, I bought a copy of the old Racing Pictorial magazine, which had color pictures of most of the NASCAR regulars posing with their cars at Daytona before the 500, and – surprise! – most of the cars they were running at Richmond looked the same, except that they had screens bolted onto the front of their cars for protection from big pieces of clay, metal, rubber or whatever.
(DIGRESSION – Some of that stuff buried in a dirt/clay racing surface was capable of splitting your radiator, so I guess half a century ago, instead of splitters on the front end, we had anti-splitters.)
My point is that I quickly learned how to spot a Petty car or a Wood Brothers car or a Bud Moore/Joe Weatherly car or a Fred Lorenzen car (or – much later – a Dale Earnhardt or Rusty Wallace car) by what it looked like.
A “Petty Blue” car was easy to spot in any racing pack, and Fred Lorenzon’s Holman-Moody Ford was reliably white.
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The Wood Brothers altered their paint jobs a little, but a white car with a red roof was the norm.
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Smokey Yunick had many drivers, different sponsors and even different numbers, but his cars were always identifiable as black and gold.
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Sometimes, a featured color became part of fan lore: Fireball Roberts’ #22 borrowed from a novelty song of the day and was called the “Purple Pontiac Eater.”
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While a few teams still retain some semblance of an appearance standard for their cars, most don’t, and with each sponsor comes a completely different look. Taken to the extreme, you can go to Jayski.com’s paint schemes page and check out the BK Racing #83 car from last year. There are between 15 and 20 distinct looks to that car, mostly due to one-race sponsorships, but even the same sponsor (E.J. Wade Construction, for instance) has multiple paint schemes.
In a crowd, how the heck do you pick out the #83? It won’t look like it did last week.
Here are just four of the looks that BK Racing brought to the track in 2016 for the #83. How many fans would go to the trouble of figuring out what you’re going to look like each week?
In a crowd, how the heck do you pick out the #83? It won’t look like it did last week.
Here are just four of the looks that BK Racing brought to the track in 2016 for the #83. How many fans would go to the trouble of figuring out what you’re going to look like each week?
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(I’m not picking on the #83 team. They have to do what they have to do to survive. But this approach makes it harder to follow any car over the course of a race, and that might make it harder for potential new fans to adopt favorites.)
So let’s look at the other side of this issue: First, I know each sponsor feels more important if it has its own distinct paint scheme, which can then be publicized as if it’s an everyday item, instantly recognizable throughout the NASCAR world (even if it was only on the car for a week). It was a lot easier to keep one look when it was STP, Lite Beer or Mr. Goodwrench every week.
A more universally recognizable car has its advantages in terms of fan identification, and maybe we can re-educate sponsors on that, because if it helps turn around the attendance/viewership slide, then more fans will see your car, and that’s good no matter what color you’ve painted it.
Summary: This certainly isn’t the most easily implemented idea, but it might build a car’s fan base, and it certainly would save money. The collectibles industry and the folks who design and make all those different color scheme wraps now will hate it, but to be cruelly blunt, racing’s not about guaranteeing their income stream.
(NEXT TOPIC: A different approach to the rules.)
So let’s look at the other side of this issue: First, I know each sponsor feels more important if it has its own distinct paint scheme, which can then be publicized as if it’s an everyday item, instantly recognizable throughout the NASCAR world (even if it was only on the car for a week). It was a lot easier to keep one look when it was STP, Lite Beer or Mr. Goodwrench every week.
A more universally recognizable car has its advantages in terms of fan identification, and maybe we can re-educate sponsors on that, because if it helps turn around the attendance/viewership slide, then more fans will see your car, and that’s good no matter what color you’ve painted it.
Summary: This certainly isn’t the most easily implemented idea, but it might build a car’s fan base, and it certainly would save money. The collectibles industry and the folks who design and make all those different color scheme wraps now will hate it, but to be cruelly blunt, racing’s not about guaranteeing their income stream.
(NEXT TOPIC: A different approach to the rules.)
