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I bid
you welcome, gentle readers, and a cordial Howdy to today’s assigned reader of
all things NASCAR. Today we’ll be covering a multitude of things, all of which
folks have complained about or pitched hissy fits over in the past week, and
I’m talking about a lot of folks, from best friends to complete strangers. Now,
it’s my turn!
Since
it’s a track and race I love, let’s start with Watkins Glen. It was announced
several times over that Sunday was the 3rd consecutive sell-out of
grandstand seats for the Cup race at WGI. Among certain factions, that caused
an uproar bigger than when Mrs. Murphy’s cow kicked over that lantern. “Did you
see all those empty seats? Don’t tell ME it was a sellout!”
Well
butter my butt and call me a biscuit! It’s a Road Course! Folks buy seats and
don’t sit in them, as they prefer to watch from their favorite vantage point.
There are Jumbotrons scattered around the road courses now, and no one needs to
be sitting in the grandstand if there is a soft, grassy hillside where he or
she prefers to sit and watch the race. Maybe there is even shade! Did anyone take a
look at the size of the infield crowd? It was about at overflow! My
understanding is that the infield parties at the Glen rival those of Talladega,
hopefully without the beads. Not everything is a plot to fool the fans.
Sometimes things are exactly as stated. For at least the last two years,
Watkins Glen has won hands down in the USA Today poll of top ten tracks. Read the completely independent
poll results here.
Then we
had the conspiracy theorists and black helicopter bunch selling the story that “tens
of thousands” (Nice definite number there) of grandstand tickets were given
away to some unnamed “large corporation” for distribution to whomever that
entity saw fit. The conclusion drawn from that bit of conjecture was that
obviously, no one wanted to come to the race. Better slow down there Sparky, before
the sheriff hauls you in for speeding. I don’t think there is a grandstand at
the Glen that will HOLD tens of thousands of folks… for the reason I just
mentioned. It has always, and we’re talking right back to the beginning, been the
policy of the sanctioning body to offer some free tickets to local businesses.
It’s called marketing and establishing or enlarging a base. It’s NOT a cloak
and dagger exercise, so take off your tinfoil hats and learn.
Then
there is a question of start times, which grow later every year, as cited in an article from the Elmira Star. WGI President Michael Printup took a very dim view of where the starting times
have gone, because fans are now saying they won’t be back because of the
lateness of the hour when they finally arrive home. NASCAR’s peacemakers would
like us to believe those start times are in deference to the fans on the West
Coast. I have many West Coast friends and some family as well. It has never
bothered anyone I know to watch live programming of NASCAR, NFL or maybe a
Sponge Bob Square Pants rerun if that’s what the kids want to see, at 10:00 AM,
which means an East Coast start of 1:00 PM. Nope, not buying that cup of
Kool-Aid. The starting times grow later to please the “Television Partners”
which are the largest remaining source of income in the sport. What the
networks want, the networks get… and they’ve paid dearly for that privilege.
Alright
gentle readers, we are about to switch gears and have a bit of conversation
about old farts and rude youngsters. Right up front, in case anyone missed the
bulletin, your scribe is 79-years old, doing her own website… alone now… owns 2
computers and a smart phone, all networked. In short, I’m the farthest thing
from “out of touch”, which was one of the terms tossed at me on Twitter after
last week’s column. I’m not sure exactly what about last week’s column was
offensive to anyone, but apparently something was, and it resulted in a “Fry
Grandma” session that pitted a half-dozen or so youngsters against this one
79-year old blue-hair. The instant it got to the point where someone called me
stupid, I blocked all of them. End of problem!
There’s
been a great deal of talk lately about “Millenials”
as though they are something recently hatched. They are not. They are simply
the young folks of today, and there is no reason in the world to expect them to
be like we were in our youth, no matter what generation anyone comes from. I
will state for the record, as I have many times before, that I feel sincerely
sorry for anyone that didn’t grow up in the 1950s. They missed so much by never
knowing all the joys that era provided. With that in mind, allow me to
reconstruct the “generations” of NASCAR along with the corresponding generations
of fans. Maybe the young ones will get it; maybe not. I would only say that I
have the advantage. I’ve been your age. You will have to be extremely lucky to
reach mine and remain of sound mind and body. Only then will you understand
that old age is not a disease or something to be ridiculed. Read and learn:
In the first four generations, the way the factories
built cars was directly influenced by the fans of the day, who of course, were
the same folks that were buying the cars rolling off the assembly lines. I’ve
done a simple breakdown of the car generations as delineated by NASCAR and I
believe they are pretty spot-on with where the breaks came. I have merely added
a bit about why the breaks came at any particular time.
Stated quite simply, there was always a direct
correlation between what the buyers wanted and what the factories built. That
part is simple economics. For decades, NASCAR followed suit and raced what the
factories built; for those first four generations, all was well and the sport
of stock car racing grew almost exponentially. Read on and you’ll see the
patterns as they developed, broken down by generations of both cars and fans.
Gen-1 –
The Cars… The "Strictly Stock” cars back in the beginning.
Cars of the 1950s, with drivers such as Lee Petty, Herb Thomas, Red Byron,
Lloyd Seay, the Flock brothers and a host of others. Cars included many makes
and models no longer available today... Hudson, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Chrysler,
Studebaker, Buick, Nash and more. Every auto maker wanted to race in the 1950s.
Gen-1 -
The Fans… I can speak
loud and clear for my generation. The biggest influence by FAR was the end of WWII.
After the invasion of Pearl Harbor, all the factories in America, no matter
what they had manufactured before, were retooled to serve the "War
effort" and the huge automobile industry was no different. Throughout the
years we were at war, there were NO new cars built in America.
Once the war ended, the baby boom beat the new car
boom by a few years because humans didn't have to retool before manufacturing.
Hey, it's true!
When new cars started rolling off the assembly lines
again, it was a mania much bigger than Pong or Cabbage Patch Dolls and the
like. The latest X-Box is pale in comparison to a brand spanking new Hudson
Hornet, Kaiser, DeSoto or anything else that hadn't
been owned and driven by anyone else. By the mid-50s, the automobile was KING!
The parallel between new autos and stock car racing cannot be overlooked or
denied.
As teenagers, we lived for a driver's license. It was
a rite of passage, and the gateway to adulthood and independence. And yes, we
were independent at a much earlier age, even without the seemingly mandatory
college diploma of today. The war was over and we were anxious to grow up and
take our place in that bright new world we'd inherited from the "Greatest
Generation." We took that place driving in those beautiful,
super-long, super-sleek automobiles that came in matching colors, inside and
out. They are still, to my eye, the most stunning cars ever made, and make is
not a factor; they were all beautiful!
Gen-2 –
The Cars… Moving to the mid-1960s and well into the 1970s,
these were the big cars, with the big engines, most notably the Chrysler Hemi
and the Ford 427. These are the boats we old-school fans love to remember… the
“Muscle Cars.” This was when the car-makers first began to pay attention to
aerodynamics, but had a long way to go. Drivers of this era included Richard
Petty, David Pearson and Cale Yarborough, again with many, many more.
Gen-2 –
The Fans… If there is a discernible dividing line between these
fans and those of the 1950s, it is probably right around the middle of the
1960s. The early baby-boomers were growing up, and like my generation before
them, continued the romance with the automobile.
(Mind you, we are speaking of race fans, and for the
most part they stood apart from the “Age of Aquarius”, “Tune in; turn on; drop
out” and the “Summer of Love” crowd of the same demographic)
In response, the cars grew larger, added a bit more
curve to the design as aerodynamics improved year by year, and were decidedly
much faster. Like a teen-age boy growing to manhood, the cars grew muscles,
without a doubt. Out on the race track, speed records fell like raindrops in a
thunderstorm. Drag racing, much of which had been conducted on the street when
I was a teen, moved to a more controlled environment and speed was King
everywhere.
Gen-3 –
The Cars… These were the smaller wheel-based cars of the
1980s... the ones that in the beginning proved over and over that they could
fly, which is not a good thing, to be sure. Behind their steering wheels were
drivers named Bill Elliott, Harry Gant, Alan Kulwicki, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty
Wallace and the rest of their competition.
Gen-3 –
The Fans… These were in large part the offspring of my generation,
almost grown and not so much in need of an automobile as we had been. They had
adoring parents, willing to chauffeur them to wherever they needed to be.
Still, there was that fascination with mechanics and speed. The cars had grown
more compact by demand, as the gas crisis of the mid-70s crippled the nation
and brought about gas rationing in some areas. Gas, when one could get it, shot
up to an unheard $1.25 a gallon in some markets, and Detroit had to listen or
lose their sales to the smaller and more gas-friendly European and Eastern
cars.
Fortunately for stock car racing, this was also the
dawn of the Television era, as NASCAR was introduced to an entire nation and
warmly received by a large portion of it. Even those that had never seen a race
were fascinated with this “new” sport. Life and racing were good in the 1980s.
Gen-4 –
The Cars… These would be
the yet smaller cars of the 1990s, which had by then lost much of their stock
appearance in the racing versions, and were decidedly race cars, no longer
resembling the cars in our driveways. This was the Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett,
Bobby Labonte and Jeff Burton era, though overlapped by drivers from the
earlier decade like Earnhardt and Wallace along with newcomers with names like Matt
Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman.
Gen-4 –
The Fans… Despite the fact that the cars no longer pretended to
be “Strictly Stock”, which in truth they never quite were, the fans of the
1990s were still fascinated with stock car racing, and could relate to
everything their parents and/or grandparents told them about the “Good ol’
days.” This generation, like those before it, went racing with those elders in
their families and a good time was had by all. NASCAR from the beginning
marketed itself as a “Family sport” and it was, in more than one way. Families
went racing together as fans. Families went racing together as drivers, passing
the racing gene down from one generation to the next. Families such as the Allisons, the Bakers, the Pettys,
the Earnhardts and hundreds more participated in the
sport, with father racing son, brother racing brother and assorted other
combinations of uncles, nephews, daughters, nieces and sisters. NASCAR had come
fully of age in the decade of the 90s, and into the new millennium. NASCAR
racing stood as the #2 watched sport in America, and life was good.
Gen-5 –
The cars… This was the age of the “Car of Tomorrow.”(COT) In
the wake of a rash of on-track deaths in 2000 and 2001, this generation brought
with it many safety features, both in the car and on the track. But… and it's a
really
big but… the COT, victim of severe scrutiny by NASCAR, produced cars
that were identical in every detail that could be controlled. It had a wing
instead of a spoiler and it had an ugly front splitter, held on with equally
ugly braces. It was fat and squat in appearance. “Squat COT! Beautiful… it was
not!” It lost fan support almost from the day it rolled out for competition in
2007. It lost manufacturer support as well, as no one could tell what make of car
they were seeing… the only difference being the headlight decals.
Between the car itself, the mandating of HANS
restraints and the installation of SAFER barriers at all NASCAR tracks where
Cup cars run, racing was safer than before, but the racing itself, for lack of
a better word, pretty much stunk. The term "Aero push" has come to be
dreaded by all race fans, and the drivers are none too fond of it either. It
means that even though car 2 in line might be much faster, it is unable to pull
out and around car 1 in line without being sucked into the side of said car. In
short, it makes passing almost an impossibility. Six years of that was more
than enough.
Gen-5 -
The Fans… This is a generation that saw wholesale changes
brought about in what seems in retrospect like an instant, to the steady,
static sport that had been so loved by every generation before. As we entered
the new millennium, this generation saw Dale Earnhardt, the actual “Face of the
sport” die on the Daytona track at the end of the Daytona 500 in 2001. A short
two years later, they bade farewell to R.J. Reynolds, which had been in place
as Series sponsor since before many of them were born. As a very bitter icing
on the cake, Bill France Jr. was forced into retirement as he fought vainly
that “battle with cancer” and as with so many others, the disease won in the
end.
There was NASCAR, the number 2 sport in the nation,
without its biggest star, without its over 30-year
sponsor and its leader stricken down by a cruel disease. If ever there were a
time for a steady hand at the helm of that good ship NASCAR, it was then. Enter
Brian France! At the very moment when the sport needed Robert Taylor from
“Father Know Best” instead it got Keith Richards, of the “Rolling Stones.”
Anyone following this generation never had a chance. Stock car racing as we
knew it for 5 generations is for all practical purposes dead and gone.
Gen-6 –
The Cars… Perhaps we should call this one the “Car of Today”…
or maybe not. It came to be in answer to the factory complaints that no one
could tell one make from another when the COT was on the track. Dodge had
already bowed out of the NASCAR scene and it was whispered that at least one of
the big American makers threatened to do so as well if the cars weren’t made to
reflect the $millions spent on designing and developing them as brand specific.
NASCAR had to listen, and at the beginning of 2013, just six short years after
the Squat COT was the new kid on the block, rolled out Generation-6. It was
different in appearance, from its predecessor and also from each of its contemporaries.
A fan could actually tell the difference between Ford, Chevy and Toyota by
looking very closely at small details. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better
looking. The next question: “Could it race?” To date, the answer to that one is
“No!”
Gen-6 –
The Fans… This one gets a bit tricky for someone my age. A
large number of today’s “new fans” are the age of my grandchildren, and a
generation unlike any this senior citizen has ever encountered. They are, for
want of a better description, “plugged in.” They walk and even drive… those
that do… with an “earbud” in one or both ears, listening to music, narrated
books, narrated school lessons and who knows what else?
They go nowhere, even to bed, without their “phone.”
They are attached to it in the same manner in which I am attached to my heart.
It is the core of their existence and they simply cannot function or live
without it. They don’t need a radio; they have an iPod. They don’t need TV;
they have a phone, or a “pad”, which is a miniature version of a computer… but
often refuses to function in that capacity. Everywhere they go, they are
accompanied by one, or more likely by both apparatuses. What they do need and
cannot function without, is WiFi and a place to
recharge.
This is not a joke. At Christmas, I gave my daughter,
my son-in-law and my two grand-daughters portable phone chargers. I gave them
other things of course, but those little chargers were the hit of the day.
Remember how I explained that in my day, the automobile meant freedom to my generation?
Well, to this one, freedom is a portable phone charger, so you never have to
hunt for a wall plug.
Yes, I can see that marketing a 3 or 4-hour race to
this bunch could present a problem. WiFi at every
track is a must, and maybe having portable chargers at the concession stands
would be an asset. Many tracks are scrambling for the honor of having the
biggest TV screen in their infield. To them I say, “Save your time and money.”
The old fans, if any still come to your track, will
complain that it blocks their sight-line across or around the track. The new
ones won’t even look up. There is a race on the track that they paid to see,
but if they watch at all, it will be on a 4” phone screen. That phone will
never leave their hands, but it won’t always be showing the race. They have the
attention span of gnats and could never sit still for the duration of a stock
car race without their phone to keep them tuned in to life.
A large percentage of them don’t own an automobile,
and wouldn’t know how to drive it if they did. They depend on others, parents,
friends or public transportation… don’t forget Uber… to get to places they
absolutely must be. The automobile means almost nothing to them, and the idea
of racing automobiles seems archaic and might even be described as “cute”, which has slowly evolved into a
term of sarcasm and amused derision.
That’s all I’ve got gentle readers. Will there be a
Gen-7 car? I honestly cannot say, but probably so. Will there be a Gen-7 fan
base? That is seriously debatable. To these aged eyes, it would appear that
perhaps the change has gone too far; the evolution has met itself coming back
and there is nothing more in which to evolve. History tells us that once the
automobile took hold and flourished, our dependence on the horse quickly
vanished, and today, horses are regarded solely as pets or bets, nothing more.
The old adage is that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat
it. See you at the Drone races!
Time
now for our Closeout. There’s nothing Classic or Country about this one, but it
just fits the occasion so perfectly.
Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling.
It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay 
