Unconventional Wisdom

NASCAR continues to adapt its traditional roots into the 21^st Century

Story and Photo by Michael Quagliana

In effort to keep up with the latest from NASCAR, I downloaded the official NASCAR Mobile app onto my iPhone 5 this past week. All of the latest news, videos, and stats are now just a click away, and the app will even send me real time updates during races. It’s easy to use, fast, and just like everything else in the digital age, incredibly convenient. As necessary as it is for a sport as big as NASACR to embrace new technologies into its culture, something about downloading the NASCAR Mobile app just felt weird.

NASCAR, a sport for the “good old boys” and deep-rooted in the American south, is now on the App Store? It’s truly hard to imagine NASCAR and new-age technology living together in harmony. Diehard fans shouldn’t be surfing their smartphones on race weekend, right? The fans should be barbequing with friends from Sunday to Sunday after driving thousands of miles to the nearest track. The fans should be head-to-toe in their favorite driver’s merchandise and lining up for hours to get an autograph. What makes the sport so great is that it can serve as an escape from work, emails, and everyday stress. For days at a time fans can lose themselves in setting like no other. It’s a subculture built on tailgating, horsepower, and rebellion. The NASCAR Mobile app is just one example of how NASCAR continues to reshape itself in the 21^st Century.

“The Chase for the Cup” has been the biggest change to the sport since its inception in 2004. It serves as a parallel to the playoffs of other major sports leagues, bringing the best drivers closer together with just ten races to go. After Matt Kenseth’s dominating championship performance in 2003, fans were outspoken about the lack of excitement, and NASCAR responded. As announced just a few weeks ago, NASCAR will make major changes to the Chase format for this coming season. Drivers will be rewarded more for winning, and four racers will be eliminated after every three Chase races (like a tournament). While sure to be exciting, this is the fourth change to the Chase format since its inception just ten years ago. NASCAR doesn’t necessarily need to return to the old system, but it needs to develop a simple format and one that they can stick with for a long time.

Hypothetically, if NASCAR had never done away with the old format (the driver with the highest point total at the end of the year wins) there would have been six different champions in the last ten seasons, including, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, and Brad Keselowksi. Instead, Johnson has won the championship six times and the parody NASACAR has been striving for has been nonexistent. The Chase is a work in progress, and the debate surrounding it has actually overshadowed many brilliant moves NASCAR has made in effort to better improve its product. A reunited television contract with ESPN, the introduction of the sleek new Generation 6 car, and the decision to finally take races away from tracks with poor attendance are just a few examples. NASCAR is trying their best to give the fans what they want, but something like the Chase has proved to be a more difficult fix then counting ticket sales.

As strange as it may seem I know that NASCAR should have an app, a Twitter, and should continuously try to connect with a whole new generation of NASCAR fans. It’s necessary to build upon the future, but for the sake of many old-fashioned race fans, they must not position themselves too far the past and what makes the sport so unique. Eldora Speedway comes to mind when I think of the potential NASCAR has to reconnect with the older generation while also connecting with the newer one. The half-mile dirt track in Ohio, which hosted a Camping World Truck Series race last July, is just begging for a Sprint Cup date. It would be classic, short track Saturday-night nostalgia, and the first time the Cup Series raced on dirt since 1970. It would be a major event, and just another step in the right direction. NASCAR is doing the right thing by revamping the fan experience with all the gadgets the world has to offer, and here’s to hoping that the front offices continue to remember the traditions that the sport was built on.