Thank you for taking the time to dig up the links. It is now clear to me that the rules were established before Kyle Busch wrecked in Feb 2015. I still think the wavier was intended for someone that missed a couple races and NASCAR really pushed that line in favor of Busch who missed 11 of the 26 races. Especially when you consider one of the rules is the driver must at least attempt to start all 26 races to be Chase eligible.
Oh, that's right... NASCAR can manipulate the outcomes of races (and do so blatantly), manipulate the points championship (and does to blatantly) and just about every other aspect the the show. But, whoa! If a team tries to manipulate the convoluted points and championship structure, that's a finin' and points deductin' It is all such utter nonsense! BHW
It's good to see Danica improving with this race! It's her best finish of the season and has vaulted her into the top 40 for the first time this year! Her new crew chief must have found some issue's and we can only expect additional top 40 finshes this year!
Down 16% from last year... Uh oh, they may have to break out the Steel Cage Matches earlier than normal this year. NASCAR - DAYTONA 500: Overnight TV rating drops, still dominates weekend sports BHW
Broadcast changes I would like to see. Less motorized camera shots. In car camera without the stupid motorized tilt. While the roof cam could stay for some shots, priority should be a set of four fixed in car cameras. The obstruction to the view that you share with the driver really really adds to the feel. The roof and bumper cams are too sterile. Its disorienting, and you lose the feel of the what the driver and car are doing, everytime a motor moves an in car camera. Less motorized track cameras, use fixed, or human operated. Announcing: A Broadcast team, with only one person in the booth having any relation to NASCAR other than being a booth broadcaster. The second person would be from another sport or motorsport entirely, preferably F1. A modern day Jackie Stewart type. A third person with no Motorsports background other than calling races, someone that actually gets excited watching and calling the races. Only have paid sponsor spots that announcers mention as intro/exit to segments, during the segments of racing that are shown, the announcers are not scripted to say specific things, or prohibited from even mentioning a car's sponsor logo or paint scheme. The current sterility and lack of character when referring to the cars on the track are killing it. When an announces says "That 22 car of Logano" "That 88 car of Dale Earnhardt", "That 48 car of Jimmy Johnson" everytime they say something with no variance, it gets old fast. "The blue Deuce" was a far more exciting moniker than "The two car of Brad Kesowloski". Do not mention any social media whatsoever. Focus on the day. This is the first year in awhile, that family of crew members I know, did not put together a party for the Daytona 500. No one was really interested in watching, the broadcast is horrible.
All good points and well thought out. Having seen a couple of NASCAR races last year, could the broadcast networks find any more annoying/obnoxious personalities than what they put in the booth, the remote booth and on pit road? Good gawd almighty, two minutes of the Waltrip brothers blathering on and on and on and I'm ready to pull an "Elvis" and shoot the TV! Some of the robo-shots that they do are innovative, especially the low angles and booms which convey the speed far better than having cameras mounted on the tops of the grandstands. We actually have a lot to thank NASCAR for in this regard. When ESPN came along and brought along all these types of innovations, the broadcasts really came alive and other forms of racing followed suit. Agree completely with you on the use of "The 2", "The 48", "The 24", et.al. It becomes so annoying that these wankers can't just say the driver's names and really it's disrespectful to the drivers. It just comes off as lazy and we're all supposed to be all so hip to the whole thing that we're automatically expected to know who "The 2" is, or whatever. What is killing the NASCAR broadcasts perhaps more than anything is the HYPE!-HYPE!-HYPE! There is an old saying in marketing, "When the product is weak, oversell". Each race gets two to three hours of pre-race hype which is approaching Super Bowl-like levels. No event, and I mean NO event, may live up to all this hype. It's absolutely exhausting to watch with all the broadcasters, all zipped up on Red Bull practically creaming themselves over every little trivial bit of information. "Jimmie Johnson's wife painted her fingernails Lowes blue to bring her husband luck today. We'll see if this works for 'the 48'". I mean, really, where do they come up with this stuff? For anyone who can sit through all this (and believe me, I know people who do) by the time the race starts, they're tuned in for the first ten laps then fall asleep, exhausted by the verbal assault on their senses (both from the broadcasters and the inane advertising) that they just konk out. Cut the pre-race hype to half an hour (maybe an hour for bigger events like the Daytonner 500), keep the Waltrip brothers on a short leash (or better yet, put Michael on a leaky boat bound for Cuba), knock off all the tabloid nonsense and just get on with the action on the track and it would be much more palatable. The problem in this country is, non-racing people associate all forms of motorsport with NASCAR. Ugh! Numbers are down 16%? What a pity... BHW
The boom cameras used to be carefully counterbalanced mechanisms with human operators working the motion with their hands. The motorized versions lack a certain feel for covering a live event. The coverage needs to to look alive, not a video game. I've run both joystick remote and hand operated TV cameras. The problem, is how directional shifts occur, a human operated remote joystick will switch inputs direction on a steady curve from full one way, to full the other way. In contrast, when a human directly pushes on a camera, the direction changes far more rapidly. Using a pressure stick, such as Airbus has switched to, instead of a joystick, improves this drastically, but I haven't seen it in use. The remote joystick operated cameras look lost in comparison. Completely robotic cameras, which I've started to see a few in use in NASCAR races, are a step in between the two. As for the racing itself, no more ultra smooth laser etched pavement, EVER. Irregularities upset aero grip, this puts more emphasis on driver and suspension movement than who brought the best micro managed aero. Daytona, after the repave, has gotten very very boring. The track is narrow, and people can run flat out. Its just a lot of laps keeping the engine temps in control, followed by a push/wreck fest. I enjoyed Daytona before the repave. It'd be fun to add a speed bump test, rather than just a ride height check, the car would get dragged on a hoist at a set speed across a set of obstacles, it'd have to clear without touching. Road cars have bodywork high enough to clear parking curbs. NASCAR's image on track badly needs this same ground clearance to sell the so called "stock car" brand.
great post and I agree. the broadcast was terrible. DW needs to go. I thought Gordon did a great job for his debut. experienced and insightful without being a carnival barker. as to commercialization of every second of the broadcast, that's the result of FOX/NBC vastly overpaying for the TV rights to a series with declining interest. they gotta get their ROI somehow
Doubtful. There are still areas of certain tracks that don't have safer barriers, and racing is a dangerous sport, but is a helluva lot better than it was. As far as the rules, I think if you miss X races for medical reasons you should still be able to make 'the chase', if you can get enough points to do so. And as for the announcers, they are what they are, the Waltrip's are what they are, just like some of the guys or sideline reporters for some football games, if I don't care for them I simply ignore them. You might be able to ATTRACT me to a game based on the announcing crew, but you won't DIStract me with a crew I don't care for.
And that's the key. The networks which previously held the broadcast rights contracts (namely ESPN/ABC and TNT) were complaining that they were losing money by the bucketloads and this was before NASCAR insisted on a $1B contract. ESPN/ABC was trying to opt out two years before the end of their contract. The very network which put NASCAR squarely on the TV map (if you will) go so fed up with NASCAR's outrageous demands that they (were) openly stating that the length of the races (especially with weather and other delays) was forcing them to take off programming that was actually profitable, like professional bowling highlights from 1974. With NASCAR sucking the life out of the networks that they "award" contracts to, it makes one wonder why they just don't start their own network a-la NFL, NBA, MLB, etc. BHW
they've tried...when Fox bought Speedvision the goal was to make it the Nascar channel. pretty soon they discovered there wasn't much of a market for 100+ hours a week of roundy round coverage, and it became FS1 (or FS2, don't recall)
Just read that Kyle Busch's pole time at Atlanta was stripped due to (get this) "rear toe was askew by 0.15 degrees". This begs the question, just how does NASCAR pass a car under numerous pre-session inspections but suddenly find something to be .15 degrees out of compliance minutes after the session? BHW
Seemingly... In NASCAR, its all semantics. Recalling back to the late 80s or early 90s, Rusty Wallace had been campaigning for Pontiac, even won a legitimate championship IIRC, and then suddenly announced that he was changing to Ford. It was a big NASCAR style brouhaha. Anyway, the next season came after Wallace made the jump to Ford and didn't miss a beat. He continued winning as if nothing had changed. I will never forget when an interviewer stuck a microphone in his face and asked him how he was doing it. Wallace's reply was interesting, in that when they made the change from Pontiac to Ford, he said they kept their same successful chassis and all they did was remove the Pontiac motor, bolted in the Ford and put Ford stickers on and off they went. Wow, I thought, this was really telling as from an engineering stand point, this should be virtually impossible. May we imagine, for example, if in F-1 Mercedes-Benz suddenly decided to run Ferrari engines in their chassis? Or, in WEC, if Porsche suddenly changed to Toyota power? Do we for one minute think that a move such as this would be possible without a ton of engineering changes that would go along with it? So, this big announcement isn't such a big deal. Chevy-Ford, whatever, they're all interchangeable. BHW
alliance with Penske or Roush? or are they going all in house? they ran Hendrick chassis and engines as a Chevy team IIRC.
-Daytona 500 ratings down 14% -Atlanta ratings down 27% eek -France family endorsing Trump eek: ) gonna be a long season.
I had a lot of distractions, and the coverage was a bit poor, but underneath, I think Atlanta must of been a great race. The old pavement tracks really let you see who's driving their cars. As for the fall of ratings, it is hard to want to follow a series with such epic journalism like these as a headlines for articles on your front page: "And then this happened" what the frick kind of front page title is that!!!! ...? Now I know why this computer has never had me type nascar.com into its browser since it was built last June. Btw, what happened to racenomics, it seems to have fallen off the internet.
Wow, you're right, racenomics.com is no where to be seen. NASCAR got so rankled by the guy (sorry, don't remember his name) for reporting the realities of the inner workings of NASCAR and the ISC that they made his life a living hell. Once they forced him to change the name of the site from NASCARnomics, his reporting slowed down, he started writing about other forms of racing but his emphasis was still 900lb gorilla on the block. Knowing NASCAR, they likely just threw him a few thousand dollars and told him to knock it off as a lot of his studies centered on the dollars and cents of NASCAR, the broadcast contracts, sponsorship and other details that NASCAR would rather keep quiet. This is what we get when a monopoly happens. I attempted on several occasions to reach out to the publisher of racenomics.com and he never replied. The theory that I put in front of him, had he chosen to respond or pursue, was that NASCAR races are in fact permitted by local fire and police authorities as "entertainment" rather than a sporting event. There is an important difference as with any event, organizers must obtain proper permits to deal with large crowds, traffic, et.al. If an event is permitted as "sport", state sporting regulations come into play in order to be sure everything is on the up and up. If an event is permitted as "entertainment" (a-la professional wrestling), there are no such regulators and the organizers are more or less free to police themselves. Making this public of course would blow what little is left of NASCAR's credibility since it is still perceived as a "sport" which we all know it is not, just ask every driver and team owner up and down the pit lane, they all say "show". The First Amendment is a wonderful thing, too bad there are so many willing to wipe their feet all over it with the full compliance from those sworn to protect it. BHW
The high point of Atlanta must have been the reduced down force aero package. At least there is a driver element re - introduced. That said, I did not watch the race.
It was pretty amazing, full green flag pit stops in a row, just a few cars on the lead lap before the first yellow came about 2/3rds into the race. You could really see the cars slip and slide on corner exit. Beyond that, it was difficult for me to figure out what was going on, didn't help I was late and missed the first 120 laps. Only one "water bottle" caution for the entire race. I try to watch at least some of any of the tracks with older pavement. I remember Atlanta being one of them, and it didn't disappoint.
Its definitely not been a level playing field, but it is perhaps starting to be(restriction plates excepted). A struggling team with Menard is caught with the same illegal parts multiple times(events!) in a row, just a warning. They are in a chase contending points, and suddenly the crapola drops in on them. With the exception of the plate events, if you are in points contention, or a past championship team, you are going to see much harsher penalties for smaller situations. Sometimes, I think things are penalized in public that aren't even there, its a "secret" we don't like what you did type of fine. MWR was penalized at Richmond for having cars pit multiple times at the end of the race, that has been going on un-penalized for years. The real reason, exhibiting how a caution caused by Boywer can change a race winner from Ryan Newman to someone else. Of course, they don't want to actually come out and say that, so instead, make up a fake "100%" rule that is immediately discarded a few weeks later at 'dega when cars hang back in a separate pack not going for the lead. :\