NASCAR's Generation Gap
Vivian Simons
Author's Note: My
articles are based solely on my observations and thoughts. No statistics are
offered. Enjoy...
I
have been thinking about how the current 20 through 30 years of age generation,
sees and feels about NASCAR racing. I do like some of their outlooks and how
excited some of them get about the things that are happening in NASCAR. Some of them do a lot of research to learn
more about the sport, but sometimes they come to the wrong conclusion about the
rules and the original intent of auto racing. That is because it is incorrectly
reported at times and some of the information they find on the internet is incorrect.
They didn't live through some of the NASCAR years as some of us older and
longtime fans have, and therefore what they are reading or hearing is not
always accurate. They didn't see the beginnings and the toughness of the racers
back then and no amount of research can begin to thoroughly explain how it was
and how it began. I don't think most of the younger fans today could ever
understand what they really went through in order to race. It appears most of
the younger fans consider all drivers as racers, when in reality they are not.
To a lot of us, there are racers and then there are drivers. I think the
difference between racers and drivers started coming into prominence when one
competitor began to be polite to others and that turned him into just a driver.
Then several other drivers followed suit and now there are quite a few that
seem to drive politely. At times it seems it has become politically correct to
the point that it has taken some of the competition away. All participants are
passionate about their sport and all are very competitive at times, some overly
so, but they are not all racers. I think that is something the current and next
generations will never understand or even agree with. These fans think they
know almost everything about racing and some possibly do know, according to the
way NASCAR does things now, but they do not know what racing was then and what
it was meant to be. Through the years, partly due to political
correctness and demands by sponsors, it has become more of a show than a true
racing competition.
It
is a totally different sport now than it was in the late 1940's, the 50's, 60's
and the first part of the 70's. It became even more different in the 80's and
90's. When Daytona International Speedway held the first Daytona 500 in 1959
Bill France, Sr. had risked everything to build the first superspeedway and was
in charge of what was known as NASCAR. He ran it his way and ruled the new
sport with what some called an iron hand. One thing he worked hard on
accomplishing was to separate the new NASCAR from the original racing that came
into being because of moonshine running. He did not want that life style
present in NASCAR although he wanted them to race in the new series. There was
quite a bit of conflict over some of the restrictions he wanted to put in
place. In 1972, his son Bill France, Jr took over as president of NASCAR and
began running it the way he felt was best. He also tried to get away from the
original moonshine connections to racing. Like his Dad, he used a heavy hand,
as has been reported many times through the years. Due to health problems, Bill
Jr turned the presidency of NASCAR over to Mike Helton in 2000. Then
in 2003, Bill Jr made his son, Brian the CEO and Chairman of NASCAR. That seems
to be the time most of the changes have come into existence. Sadly, many of the
younger generation of fans are not aware of how the sport came about.
We
longtime fans who became interested at the inception of the NASCAR Series of
stock car racing as it was known then, along with the good memories we have,
will always feel those were the best years of NASCAR because we lived them and
understood them. But now we are caught in the era of a lot of new stuff which
is just totally different. We are trying to relay how and why it was in the
beginning and it is very hard at times to connect to the current younger
generation of fans. There is a lot of interest from them and there are
different reasons why they are interested. Some love the history of the sport
while some others are only interested because it has been the current
"in" thing to do. There are still others who are interested because
they want to see the horror of crashes and then the rivalries that come from
some of the most horrid incidents. Stock
car racing seems to be getting distorted and further and further away from what
it was. The longtime fans are trying very hard to adjust and accept what is now
happening in the sport just as the newer fans do.
Some
of us in the older generation of fans feel a sadness because we think the
younger generation just won't have an accurate history of the sport. I just
watched part one of a show on CMT called "NASCAR: The Rise of American
Speed". It was the first of a three part series and was very interesting
and did seem to be based on fact. I would recommend that all fans watch this
series of programming and learn from it.
Your
comments are welcome and please keep them clean.
Thank
you.
