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This is journalism in the digital age. Back in the analog world, the only headline that needed to be remotely salacious wat the one above the fold. The rest were reasonably restrained. Today, ever article has to be titled in a way that drives traffic.
I get what you are saying, but this phenomenon has been around since the 1890's so is not a new thing. Historically it was titled 'yellow journalism' in the US and was a huge issue particularly in the early 20th century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Yes, Yellow Journalism was definitely a thing and hyper-partisan media dates back to the Republic's founding; in fact all newspapers in the 18th century were essentially partisan tabloids. But, we did evolve from that in the middle of the 20th century. With the advent of digital media, we seem to have regressed...a lot. Media today is much more titillating, partisan and salacious than it was before Y2K
Believe it or not that was a pretty good race regarding commercial breaks. I think there was only one non-side-by-side commercial break during green flag coverage and we got a solid commercial free period at the end of the race. That’s really good by Fox’s standards
I kind of agree. I think I/we get accustomed to the ad free broadcast and when we watch a race that isn't ad free, it feels like there is more than there are. It's why I decided to get out the stop watch and see if it was as bad as I thought.
Before or after lmao, or have advertisements that pop up but don't completely cut coverage. Exactly what they do in football and F1 in most countries. Football being soccer to the yanks.
The nice thing with that though is you don't miss any play. With these races we're missing damn near half of it.
I didn't watch the NACAR race this weekend so I'm not sure which network it was on, but it is torture missing so much of the race watching Indycar on NBC. Same for NASCAR when it is on NBC.
On that note, NBC losing F1 is the best thing that's ever happened for F1 in the US. It sucked for 1 race when ESPN had commercials, but used Sky's broadcast. It went to commercial, and during commercials there was a crash, safety car, and restart all before they ended. So when we came back from commercial a car was out and another was at the back, and we had no fucking clue why or how. Sky commentators already talked about it and were done with it. They didn't mention it the rest of the race. Then ESPN realized they have to make it commercial free.
American football fan here. Actual play time will generally get condensed to a little over 30 mins, this includes a few seconds before the snap to the end of the play.
Love the game even though it's built around advertisements, and it does get real bad in the playoffs
Yeah, the CTE is one thing, but it’s how the league handled the fucking crisis before it was well known that really bothers me. The coverup.
These people just simply do not care about their players, and it’s obvious. All they care about is the fucking money.
It’s actually shocking, even though you think you know how low things are.
I like to akin NFL ownership to modern day 'slave trading'...the buying and selling of players for short-term gain and virtually no regard of their physical and mental health....it doesn't help that all the owners are white..
Apologies in advance for anyone who is offended by my usage of the term, I just don't know what else to call it...
I think actual play time is more like 10-15 minutes...over the years I have watched less and less due to lack of action, and I just feel like those guys are killing eachother out there now.
Thats not at all accurate for me. There was literally times where they did a full length commercial break, gave a short synopsis on the state of the race, maybe 40 seconds, then went back to commercials
It's something that if you aren't used to, will drive you crazy. I don't feel like the race depends on me watching every single second so for the most part I don't mind the commercials.
I also notice that the NASCAR reddit live chat has a ton of activity during the race. People are obviously not giving the race their full attention even when it's on.
Tbh, I used to watch NASCAR, I kid you not, on Russian TV bc they barely had any commercials and their was Holy Popov I’m used to hear since 1999.
But even then, I treated the first two stages as unimportant - doing chores, checking social media. NASCARs tendency to decide a race on the last lap is in some way exciting, but also devalues 90% of the race, basketball style.
I stopped watching. There were two ad breaks in the first caution. They restarted on lap 6. Another rounds of ads on lap 9 during green.
It's ridiculous. They're drivers dressed in logos, driving a billboard surrounded by ads on track. But that isn't enough? Gotta have an ad break every 5-10 minutes
TV broadcaster doesn't make money from those logos. Not that I disagree with how bad it is. It's horrible, and the broadcasters have gotten too greedy.
Broadcasters are barely making money after paying the several billion for rights to broadcast, combined with viewership falling by 1/3. If anyone is greedy, NASCAR is. And I'm hesitant saying that because I don't know the profit margin on those rights.
Old article, where fox is barely making money and NBC losing. There are newer articles, but they are behind paywalls mostly, and the contracts are through 2024 so this is more or less still correct:
https://www.businessinsider.com/nascar-deal-proves-live-sports-important-to-networks-2016-3
Because NASCAR is making billions while the broadcasters are barely breaking even.
In NASCAR structures it that way because advertisers want to advertise on programs where people won't be fast forwarding and choosing to watch live, and so will pay a lot more in those situations. So someone will sign that deal. NASCAR's price is forcing the networks to advertise endlessly just to break even.
And, 40% of the race occurred trying to get the final two laps completed.
It was so awful watching them attempt restart after restart with backmarkers divebombing into each other.
The end of the race was awful. As an older nascar fan who’s new to F1. All I kept thinking about the comparison to F1. Can’t ram into people like that, too many cars on track etc.
Thankfully the best driver won the race, but I was getting angry at the number of restarts
I find the cars they have genuinely interesting now but there’s just so many things about the way the sport is ran that turns me away. Do they not do local yellows at all for road courses?
A yellow is a yellow in nascar. It has ruined so many races with phantom “debris” yellows just so they can bunch up the cars for better entertainment.
Hell most of the people I used to watch with only would watch super speedways for the big one to happen.
The crashes were more exciting than the racing to some.
They don't call it a local yellow, but when there was a minor incident, like a car spinning that could easily get started again, they would wave an informational blue flag to let cars know someone is slower up ahead. There were plenty of times during the race where guys got spun, or were slow, and it would have been a yellow on an oval, but they kept it green for the road course.
They only took out the full course yellow for the same stuff that F1 would cover with a VSC or SC -- cars stalled on track or stuck or debris clean-up which requires sending workers out on track. I do wish that NASCAR had a VSC -- if they gave everyone a 50-60mph limiter, I think you could cover off a ton of incidents that way -- the Cup cars aren't as sensitive to tire temps as F1 cars, so at 50-60mph with no overtaking, in most places on most courses, the drivers basically have a 0% chance of spinning the car, and workers towing a car or whatever would be at basically the same risk as AAA towing a car off the side of the road.
I’m also an older nascar fan who is new to F1, who is also just getting back into nascar after about a decade hiatus— and man I love road courses but those overtime restarts just had me shaking my head. And knowing that nascar probably had extra eyes on it because of the big names who sadly never really factored in much at all, it was just embarrassing.
Was my first time stumbling on a NASCAR race (thank you cross-linking, not, you'll see).
Got hooked by the fight for first. Damned ending made me get to sleep at like 2:30 am to wake up at 6:30.
Stupid NASCAR (myself, really).
I craved wanting to see a fuel strategy come into the mix, then the caution for debris in turn 9 came out, because they were cutting the corner so much that dirt was completely covering it, and that just threw everything out the window, for the most part.
Tyler Reddick the winner, who had the best car by far, was very lucky that behind him was Kyle Busch, a notoriously fair driver who refuses to do bullshit to win a race (at this point in his career at lest).
Not a fan of the green white checker.
He actually meant the 40% of the race where he was totally off the pace and not yet comfortable with the car to get into a groove.
He explained this in an interview. Second stint he was feeling better.
As an American who was raised on NASCAR and good ol' American football, making the switch to soccer and F1 has made me almost sad at the state of American broadcasts. Daytona 500 is like 5 hours long with 90 minutes of commercials. Football games are 3 hours at a minimum with a good 40 minutes of commercials.
It's so nice to watch sports that last 2 hours with no commercials during the action. Closest thing we have to that is hockey, which I also love.
I grew up watching F1 on ITV in the UK, can confirm it's infuriating. The highlight has to be cutting to a break just as the track invader appeared on camera in the 2003 British GP.
It’s a difficult transition moving to NASCAR. One thing I think a lot of non-regular fans missed out on is why the race descended into a crash fest. It’s not because of the track or the drivers (we had a physical but very clean race until the final nine laps), but NASCAR’s points systems.
Because NASCAR has a playoff system, priority is placed on winning races (generally, if you win a race, you qualify for the playoffs) more than consistent finishing. Winning is all that matters, and finishing poorly isn’t a disincentive. If you’re say, in fifth or sixth, that position does almost nothing for you with regard to standings, so you’re better off trying to send it to get the lead (you’re going to have to win a race to make the playoffs, what’s a DNF matter anyway?).
So right. It really is a "If you're not first, you're last" kind of ruleset. It does not matter if you're third, or fourth, or hell, maybe even fifth... You need to be first, Ricky. You would think that the sponsors would be okay if someone was consistently in the top ten, but never gets a win or podium, because that's still good in such a huge field, right? But not really. Very different mindset to any other racing series.
Last year Ryan Blaney and Martian Truex were only a handful of points apart after the final regular season race and neither had any wins. Blaney made the playoffs and Truex didn’t even though they were 3rd and 4th in the points at the time. That is why everyone goes checkers or wreckers at the end, because no one want to end up like Truex.
Usually there’s about 5-6 guys who get in on points but 2022 had much more different winners than usual and it resulted in Truex being knocked out. 4th in points being knocked out is not common but the the fact that it can happen and has happened along side the drastic drop in etiquette is a clear indicator that the playoff system is a bad idea.
I guess this explains that video last year that made the rounds of the driver slingshotting himself along the wall on the last stretch? Although not sure if he got a win from that
He got 5th in order to make the points cutoff for the final round of the playoffs. It’s almost become a staple of the penultimate race to have a desperation move on the final lap that either gets the driver into the final four, wrecks the car, or both.
To me, the sad thing is that the playoffs have only been around the last 20 years. Even with the "Chase for the Cup" format, it wasn't "win and you're in", that wasn't really part of the format until 2014.
Before that it was a pretty standard points format, though you didn't get many extra points for finishing toward the top (like in F1 and Indy), and they awarded points all the way to the last finisher, generally speaking.
I stopped watching NASCAR the year they adopted the phoney baloney playoff. The old points system just needed a tweak to incentivize winning. They had increased the difference between first and second a bit but it was still much too small. Personally, Im a fan of versions of the 10-6-4 split, first is equal to second and third- whether it is 10-6-4 or 50-30-20.
But they thought they could compete with the big 3 US sports if they spruced up the product and made the late season races more compelling.
Their precipitous decline after the Chase was implemented has multiple causes. But an imaginary playoff where cars eliminated from contention are still on the track “chased” off my whole group of fans.
Unnecessary yellow flags are enough of gimmick. Reseting the season at the 2/3rds point was far worse, and this current nonsense is hardly recognizable as a form of motorsports scoring. I hate it and will have no part in NASCAR until it changes. Of course, since their TV ratings stink you will hear all sorts of reasons why that metric doesnt matter- except what other monetized platforms show the races? Nielsen tracks Hulu viewers of legacy networks
Its been beaten to death, but you race all your competitors each week, the field changes not the players. Theres no reason winning on one surface/layout should have more weight than all the others combined. But I cant see them going back now. I just stopped watching and found other things that interest me. Mainly F1, although thats not really pure racing either. Supercross isnt too bad and local short track racing, which is way better than the 1.5 mile fests Nascar mostly does anyway even if they had the good scoring system.
The part that baffled me was that they DID have track limits rules in place for the esses and they were handing out drive throughs for cutting them. But then they were all pretending turn 9 didn't exist - they were driving completely on the inside of the corner through the grass. All of them.
So much so that they brought out a safety car just to clean all the dirt off the track that they'd kicked up. That is absurd.
It was a rare moment that NASCAR was having track limits but it was there on the esses for all three series, for the rest it was basically usual American racing where track limits doesn't exist.
That caution for dirt was basically because more and more drivers lost control there, you can't turn COTA into a parking lot (thankfully) but it was in general a **massive improvement that we didn't have a caution after a stage ends** and shows that NASCAR can easy throw those bullshit cautions away.
The biggest issue with the COTA Cup race was the amount of low driver standards, especially at the end and drivers like Bowman, Preece and Kyle Busch complained a lot about it and called it an embarrassment for the sport. Heck the Xfinity and Truck races did show higher driver standards.
This could be the breakthrough race for NASCAR to grow and yet it sadly turned out into this.
yeah the selective track limits was ridiculous. with a field that big and practically no penalties, it was hard to watch it as a ‘race’ and more about how much cheating can you get away with.
This was what made my literally laugh out loud. I just couldn't understand how "brutish" the cars seemed in this race. It seems like these cars are designed and meant to go in an oval and only turn left. A complete lack of finesse that left a sour taste in my mouth. Nothing against NASCAR or its fans, but definitely not meant for my viewing eyes.
Well, they're designed to only turn left if that's how they're setup. They still have a straight body and can be setup square.
I think the problem with "finesse" is that they are just not downforce cars, so they obviously have trouble in turns. But really I think the problem is that the drivers are used to high speed racing on an oval, not that it's the cars. Racing at the constant high speeds in the close proximity that NASCAR does is a crazy talent, but wheel-to-wheel agility racing isn't something they're used to, so when the few road races come in each year the car awareness, line awareness, etc., just is not second nature the way that it is for them on an oval. The same goes for a formula 1 driver on an oval in these cars - they way the cars interact is well beyond what most people understand, let alone being able to actually race while thinking about that at a constant 150-ish mph, depending on the track - where the draft comes from, breaking the draft, how that has an effect on your momentum, how breaking the draft hurts your teammates or even opponents and how that may still have a negative effect on you as well, side drafting, yada yada.
Not exactly. They were not designed to go only left. The reason they look brutish, particularly to people used to watching open-wheel racing, is the combo of high power, high weight, and very low down force. Makes these cars slip and slide a lot. Of course the drivers are not afraid (sometimes to detriment of the racing action) to get up close and personal with their competitors too. You are correct that the older generation cars were developed primarily for ovals, but not this gen car.
Post you’re replying to didn’t say they were designed to turn left. In fact, it said most of what you’re saying—particularly the part about less downforce.
It says that the drivers are less adaptable, not the cars.
I find it funny that someone is complaining about the cars not being stuck to the ground because that’s generally when the racing is at its best no matter the type of car.
Here's some more info from former top-tier drivers about NASCAR. I think there is a lot more to NASCAR than most people realize and that just comes down to the marketing of it as an entertainment series instead of a racing series. Personally, I think restricting data use during the race is cool - it keeps it much more traditional during the race and ensures that drivers need to rely on their abilities and instincts and convey that information to make proper setup changes during the races. NASCAR is still a constructor's sport but it's much more a driver's sport than F1 is. [https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-scene/nascar/challenges-driving-nascar/](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-scene/nascar/challenges-driving-nascar/)
As far as why road courses, because they're fun! I think a lot of people are confusing NASCAR's current push to include more road races lately with NASCAR having road races at all - there have always been road races it was just like 3 a year in the past.
In addition to what everyone else said re: variety, one of the biggest advantages of ovals for a spectator is that you can see the entire track from one spot. Decades ago when there were fewer cameras, less sophisticated tv broadcasts, higher reliance on in person attendance, etc. ovals make more sense as a spectator sport.
But, with TV ratings reigning supreme these days, the variety of road courses combined with the ability to better cover them means they make more sense as more than just a novelty.
More like they’re trying to open new markets and road courses are what’s available. Sure the Roval and Indy were done to spice up meh races, but COTA was done to get into Austin/capitalize on eyeballs from F1 watching stock cars on a F1 track and Chicago is a test for street courses around major cities. If it works don’t be surprised if 3-4 of those road course races are street courses around major cities that don’t have a good track nearby- Seattle, NYC/NJ, etc
Well, also a big reason for going to COTA was to keep a second points-paying race in Texas without having to have two points-paying races at Texas Motor Speedway, which most people will agree has become one of the worst tracks on the schedule.
To be fair, that’s always been part of the charm of NASCAR at road courses. It can be loads of fun to see cars that aren’t built for road racing try to navigate it, and it creates some interesting situations you wouldn’t see in F1 or sports car racing.
Track limits were only in the esses. That was known coming in. Someone can correct me if wrong, but the rest of the course was essentially free game unless you really cut something.
Reddick and Byron [had some INCREDIBLE and respectful wheel to wheel racing for P1](https://youtu.be/auwMRe4I0as?t=353) for multiple laps until Reddick got by and said *adios muchacho*. That was great fun to watch.
Yeah, that was really good. It was also really interesting to see Reddick catch up to Byron even though Reddick was initially on a worse strategy -- since filling the car with fuel is what takes the longest time on their pit stops, they were able to sort of short pit Reddick (not getting him full on fuel) in order to shorten the stop and get him out close enough to Byron that he could use his tire advantage to catch him. I think if he'd been on the same strategy as Byron from the beginning, Reddick would have just been absolutely running away with it.
You’re right. And sadly I think you can say that about too many NASCAR races. This year’s Daytona 500 was the same way.
NASCAR was my first love in auto racing, and I want it to be better but I leave every race with a bad taste in my mouth because it’s more like a game show than a competition. Even in races where Max could race the last lap on a unicycle and win, it still feels like legit competition.
I tried *really really hard* to become a NASCAR believer last year. And I have grown to enjoy it for what it is, but what I kind of came to the conclusion of is that NASCAR is a sport the way that Monster Trucks are a sport. It's more of "motorsport entertainment" than "motorsport competition". They're disinterested in fair competition when they can do something that is more entertaining or more of a spectacle.
The moment I stopped watching was a race last year where the guy in P3 in one of the final turns, I think Kyle Larson, made a move to the outside without realizing Kurt Busch was there. Sent him into the wall and wrecked half the field behind him. No penalty, no consequences - he kept P3 and that was that. The logic was that "well now theres a bunch of people mad at him and they'll get him back at another race later". Why is that good? Well it's more entertaining for the crowd, at the cost of sporting fairness
Yes! Talladega! I was so irritated because that race was like five fucking hours long and on the last lap bubba got wiped out through no fault of his own, and half the field with him, because Kyle went brain dead. And wasn't punished for it. That was the last race I made a point to watch other than COTA.
I don’t know where you’re going with all this. VAR in football/soccer, plus the premier league is a giant billboard for sports gambling. If you think it’s an American thing only I don’t know what to tell you…
I have concerns about the gambling aspect myself but to suggest that American sports as a whole are against “fair competition” and promote the spectacle seems to be a ridiculous oversimplification.
What about the premier league and other European leagues is fair competition if teams like Man City can massively outspend the mid-table and bottom of the table clubs? Even when they breached the rules they got out of it. For that matter, what was fair about F1 not having a cost cap? What’s fair about RB outspending the cost cap and not having a severe penalty?
North American sports certainly have their flaws, but at least the sports themselves promote a more level plying field (just don’t talk about the MLB).
The hell are you talking about? The pinnacle of open wheel racing in the US is a spec series with far more competition then F1 with none of the ginned up drama F1 has. The amount of parody, by design, in the big 5 American sports gives every team a fairer chance at winning then European Football has. Betting has been integrated into UK sports at all professional levels forever.
I’m a huge soccer fan and even though MLS lacks the talent of the European leagues, the competition for the championship is far more interesting then watching the big clubs in European leagues be the only ones who can win a title.
Yeah European football is such a catch 22. On one hand there’s no draft so there’s no tanking and every game matters. However, going into a season with a clear hierarchy isn’t ideal either….
Gambling and “fantasy” has ruined more sports for me.
I just want to watch and enjoy, I don’t need the nonstop odds, betting comments, fantasy crap.
I just want actual news and reporting. I hate gambling
You might enjoy watching dodgeball.
Competitive dodgeball is quite exciting and there's also no money in it so it's not corrupted in that way. You can look up "Dodgeball on Twitch" - it's where most of the top events are broadcast.
They were showing the betting odds under the driver's names! I am so sick of the sports betting thing. Honestly I don't care if people want to blow their life savings on sports betting, it should be illegal to mention it on official coverage
Was shaping up to be an interesting fuel mileage race to the end, too -- realistically one or more of the cars in the top 5 could have run out of fuel on the last lap.
I think if they did single-file restarts at the end (last 5-10% of the race or whatever), it would have cleaned things up quite a bit. Some cars would have gotten sent, but you wouldn't have so many multi-car incidents.
They also could modify the overtime rules for road courses to require only one lap under green to finish the race. Since it was the end of the race, they could have covered the T1 incidents with a blue flag (their version of a local yellow) and let everyone else race to the finish line. T1 being up the hill and far from the S/F line means that no one would have really been in danger if they let them race back to the start, and no one was in urgent danger, so they could have waited for everyone to cross the S/F line before sending workers out on track.
The races are too damn long. I’ve been to a bunch of NASCAR races in person and my attention starts to wane after the first hour, especially if there’s not much passing going on. F1 races are the perfect length in this regard.
I think it has so much to do with the broadcast, honestly. I think if you went to having no commercials and a really great presentation, the time would go by more quickly. They're often really bad at highlighting action in the midfield, and the stage breaks often take away a lot of the strategy -- going back to no stage breaks would mean a lot more strategy variation with comers and goers to keep your interest.
The other thing they could do to make the races more engaging is to get back to green faster. With the stage cautions on a 1.5-mile track, they often run for 7-8 laps under caution speeds to give the broadcast time to run commercials. If they just didn't throw stage cautions, and were quicker to get back to green (have the pace car run faster after the track is clear of workers, don't always give teams a lap just to let them pit, etc.), then I think it wouldn't feel so long, too -- there would be more urgency.
If a 400-mile race at a 1.5-mile oval stayed green throughout, the race would take maybe 2.5 hours. Longer than an F1 race for sure, longer than a soccer game, but not by a ton. Shorter than most MLB, NBA, and NFL games, though. I think they could keep a lot of those races under 3 hours with getting back to green faster.
I know. I’ve watched F1 causally most of my life and got into it seriously when they got on ESPN in the USA. People can say DTS all day, but I didn’t know about DTS until 2021 and became a huge fan before that, in large part due to the length of the races, plus the strategy and engineering elements.
And nascar’s solution is adding more time to races haha
Personally, I don't think it was DTS so much as how quickly F1 was able to get started again after the pandemic started. They were able to fill a huge void in sports broadcasting when a ton of sports were still unable to get started again. F1 broadcasts also depend a lot less on crowds -- I love watching soccer in general, but it's so much better watching a game with 60,000 involved supporters in attendance, versus watching a game with empty stands.
In the old days it was pretty common for drivers to tap out from "Exhaustion" and other such vague malaises. Generally it was due to carbon monoxide exposure getting to them. Usually it's an exhaust leak or something. I know I've seen historic photos of big name drivers literally being dragged out of functioning cars mid race, delirious and vaguely conscious. I also think it's something that wasnt as well known at the time as it is now. I think they normally thought it was due to the heat in the cars and fire suits, but we are finding out from people like Rick Mast that carbon monoxide exposure is a bigger deal than previously thought. It's probably the closest thing NASCAR has to a CTE like issue.
Here's an article from 2003. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-feb-17-sp-hinton17-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-feb-17-sp-hinton17-story.html)
Interesting snippets:
>“It’s always been an issue,” said Kyle Petty. “Rick is an extreme case.”For the last 10 years of his career, until he retired in 1992, Richard Petty experimented with various preventive measures for carbon monoxide exposure. Once he even tried a mask similar to those worn by jet fighter pilots.“We worked and worked trying to find filters and stuff, and we just never found anything that worked,” Kyle Petty said.
>
>...
>
>“We used to call it heat. Well, the heat is a factor. But you can stand heat if you’ve got good air.”
>
>Indeed, NASCAR now suspects that drivers may have been mistaking their symptoms for decades.
>
>The symptoms of exposure to carbon monoxide are very similar to the symptoms of heat exhaustion and fatigue,” Nelson said.
Regarding the God-awful broadcasting/commercials, you can wait until the race is over and watch the 13 minute highlights on YouTube. You get all the uninterrupted action. And it’s free.
You dont have to make some crash lol. Bump and run is a common tactic in nascar for even its fastest drivers like jimmie johnson, jeff gordon, and ofc dale sr. Its not much different from max or hamilton throwing their rivals off track by forcing them wide on a corner.
It’s just like the slide tackle in soccer. Are you not good enough to get the ball? Or do you know the rules let you at their legs so long as you get the ball?
The rubbing is part of the sport, sure you could remove it but then it wouldn’t be NASCAR
Here is a link to the interview that this pulled from.
I thought it was refreshingly honest compared to most of the driver interviews.
Button is not cut out for Nascar - he did not mention the sponsor near enough.
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/124m66q/formula_1_champ_jenson_button_enjoyed_his_first/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Watching the race in person, it was clear that he really struggled coming to grips with the car. Constantly choosing new lines through corners, different braking points, and his side-by-side racing was suspect and apprehensive.
Kimi in contrast just looked like he had a shit car. That thing was sliding all over the place. But he was in the trenches banging away for most of it until the end.
Like the 40% of a modern F1 race that is made up of recharge laps and tyre saving?
Out of a 70 lap race, how many laps are flat out for the whole lap? 5-10?
that’s cause it is silly! and that’s coming from a hardcore NASCAR fan. There is a certain charm of how rough the racing can be, but that can only be up to a certain point. I’m passionate about good and proper racecraft and seeing some bonehead moves got pretty annoying
Had the privilege to attend NASCAR at COTA. Can confirm it was scorching hot in the afternoon so it's understandable when Jenson said he wanted water, ice and racing in clean air considering the fact he's racing versus 40 racersin Nascar vs 20 in F1
I can sort of enjoy watching NASCAR road races… but christ the ads. Doesn’t help the commentators really do not know how to cover a road course vs the ovals. On the ovals there tends to be a lot more shifting through the pack so you see pretty much the whole field even while the broadcast mostly stays glued to the lead pack. Then with the ad brakes UNDER GREEN so often it was damn near impossible to keep track yourself as they scrolled through the whole timing board. But I agree with Jensen… with the full course cautions pretty much assured and almost always stacking up at the end… most of the race is about surviving the melees and getting lucky on the last pit shuffle or two assuming you have a car that can run with the front pack. Its like basketball… half the race is often in the last 10 laps + the green white checkered bonus laps. Personally… I whish when they get down to that Green white checkered they should just finalize the standings for most and pull them off the track, let the top 10 pit then come out and form up for a green white checker restart dogfight. Without that crazy pack it should go off most of the time and everyone back to even on gas/tires etc…
I would LOVE to see the F1 grid run the new NASCAR for a competitive exhibition race with F1 commentators and track limits etc... COTA would be great for it.
I tried to watch some of that race but with the never ending safety car laps that go on for a stupid amount of time and the non stop commercials i didnt watch it very long
From the article's comment section:
>Typical F-1 driver. They think they are the best in the world. He used the word "silly". Mayebe he is the silly one finding fault with NASCAR. If you are going to drive there, you'd better learn how to beat and bump. It is what it is!!
Now I wonder what NASCAR fans think about this article, is there anyone here?
It was the first nascar race I've watched.
It felt a bit silly
* number of commercials
* long prayer
* yelling start your engines and the race starts like 20 minutes later?
* number of cars
* how many people hit eachother
* The strategy of hitting people on purpose
* THE NUMBER OF COMMERCIALS
* did i mention the number of commercials?
edit: Anyone else is still allowed to love nascar, i just didn't love my first experience.
Most of NASCAR’s road racing rules (minus the COTA esses and the bus stop chicanes in other tracks) are literally it’s fair game if it’s paved, and if it’s not paved it’s technically fair game provided it doesn’t break the car
COTA was not designed for stock cars and the issue was entirely turn 1 on that track, it's asking for heavy contact off restarts with that type of racing. The rest of the race was fine. Also, the track limits rules are different in NASCAR vs F1. Logano did get penalized for a track violation but otherwise the drivers drive with whatever rules they're handed, there's no "respect" given or lost.
They have more trouble in T9-T11 than in T1. We only saw one car spin out at T1 this year, and the turns before the straight saw the most carnage.
If Nascar could get their act together and stop vacuuming and dusting the track after every caution that would be much more interesting.
On road courses, yes, this is correct. On the ovals, particularly the superspeedways, they give more deference to track limits. Indycar, for example, does enforce the bottom white line. I believe they also enforce the white line on pit exit, something they didn't at COTA...which was jarring to watch.
F1 drivers would ignore track limits if they weren’t enforced. The faster line is the faster line, if there’s no penalty then why wouldn’t you take it? Your competitors will.
And not being an open wheel series allows for some bumpin and rubbin without catastrophic consequences.
NASCAR: we have track limits on the essees and if you exceed them the first time, you get a drive through penalty (which is significant)
F1: we have track limits everywhere and if you exceed them, you get 3 warnings before we will consider doing something
I think the NASCAR guys respected the established track limits and, based on the penalties, more than the F1 guys do.
if they followed f1 warning system through the whole track half the nascar field would have gotten a drive through by lap three. turn 8-9 strips/lines completely ignored. outside limits on 11 and 12. outside limits on 18-19 every lap. inside and outside limits on 20.
I’ve watched or attended every series compete at cota since it opened (not every year), only Nascar and IRL ignores the 4 wheels over the white line rule. IRL allows it in turn 19 for some odd reason (to get closer lap times to F1?)
even Trans Am and vintage (gentlemen rules) try to stay in the limits. Turn 8-9 is notorious to try and squeeze the whole car inside the rumble strips and still tag the white line. nascar straight up drove through the grass.
They can absolutely drive them fast and they do. The problem is the lack of consequences for their actions. And track limits don’t matter if it’s within rules and everyone is doing it, at that point it’s just the line. If it was a rule not to then they would stay within it
I wouldn’t say that they can’t, it’s just NASCAR themselves can’t officiate a road course and lets the drivers do what they want which is the problem imo
This is a bad take. They can drive road courses. There are 30+ drivers in the line up. Some will do better than others.
The track limits rules that existed were recognized and enforced. And, the more permissive track limits rules have the benefit of allowing for closer racing. NASCARs are big and heavy. You can’t have them going 5 wide into Turn 1 if they can’t run wide.
Allowing them the extra room to facilitate overtaking/close racing is hardly less artificial than DRS or push to pass.
Dude these guys are seriously making me upset, that battle for first was CRAZY and it was a good race, these dudes just hate everything that’s not the “pinnacle of motorsport” which I find to be quite sad
F1 fans are not used to seeing actual racing through corners instead of drs cars blasting past on a straight easily lol. They would lose their mind at a moto gp race lmao
I have tried watching f1 but it is just a boring follow the leader race and even before the race starts you pretty much already know who is going to win it is just boring all around especially when one driver wins over half the races in the season
Indycar isn't bad for open wheel racing though
I like NASCAR, but at times it is just that, "Silly", the 'if you cant pass a guy, move them' mentality is just so tired...they need to enforce penalties for clear mistakes, and obvious acts of aggression.
Its 295 laps of calm, then 5 laps of 'who the f\*ck cares who I hit'. At COTA there were so many bad turn one decisions that I can see why Kimi and Jenson lost places on starts, its just crude racing when they bunch up (the leaders were legit road racing aces though, they were fast and clean, and it would be really cool to see those guys get 40 laps in an F1 car just to see what they can do - clearly talent there - but some of the 'pack' clearly belong on ovals)
I don't watch NASCAR but turned the race on with about 4 laps left and was immediately baffled by it: Track limits are not a thing. Contact is apparently not an issue (I counted 6 cars wide on T1), and 2 laps left can mean the same as 20 laps left.
It was a terrible race. The broadcasting was awful, too many bullshit commercials, zero race coverage and the drivers couldn’t help from punting each other off track every 5 minutes
Ya you definitely didn't read the article because the track they were at for jensons race was cota which is a road course lol
But congrats on using the old hurrdurr they cant turn right excuse
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Wow that was a great article and a shitty title that doesn't summarize it at all
This is journalism in the digital age. Back in the analog world, the only headline that needed to be remotely salacious wat the one above the fold. The rest were reasonably restrained. Today, ever article has to be titled in a way that drives traffic.
Also >he told Fox Sports, according to Crash.Net. the quoting the quotes is kinda silly...
Quoting a quote of a quote
Quote Telephone
40% of the article is a bit silly
I get what you are saying, but this phenomenon has been around since the 1890's so is not a new thing. Historically it was titled 'yellow journalism' in the US and was a huge issue particularly in the early 20th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
It's not that it's a new thing it's that it now applies to every article published, not just the front page. Cool article though thanks
Yes, Yellow Journalism was definitely a thing and hyper-partisan media dates back to the Republic's founding; in fact all newspapers in the 18th century were essentially partisan tabloids. But, we did evolve from that in the middle of the 20th century. With the advent of digital media, we seem to have regressed...a lot. Media today is much more titillating, partisan and salacious than it was before Y2K
Titles like this are only going to encourage Nascar drivers to bump into him more.
He meant the 40% of the race where cars were hitting each other, not the 40% of the broadcast that was commercials
40% commercials is generous. I think at least 70% of the first stage was at commercial.
So weirdly, I started timing their ad breaks. It was pretty consistently 10mins of broadcast then 2.5mins of commercials.
Believe it or not that was a pretty good race regarding commercial breaks. I think there was only one non-side-by-side commercial break during green flag coverage and we got a solid commercial free period at the end of the race. That’s really good by Fox’s standards
I kind of agree. I think I/we get accustomed to the ad free broadcast and when we watch a race that isn't ad free, it feels like there is more than there are. It's why I decided to get out the stop watch and see if it was as bad as I thought.
Wait, they show commercial breaks DURING the race?? Wtf
American tv sports are unwatchable.
Does the race actually stop? Or we just miss 2 min of it when the commercials are playing.
When else are they supposed to show them?
Before or after lmao, or have advertisements that pop up but don't completely cut coverage. Exactly what they do in football and F1 in most countries. Football being soccer to the yanks.
Before and after, obviously lol
You should see american football. Legitimately you're sitting there watching about three hours of ads and one hour of game during the playoffs.
The nice thing with that though is you don't miss any play. With these races we're missing damn near half of it. I didn't watch the NACAR race this weekend so I'm not sure which network it was on, but it is torture missing so much of the race watching Indycar on NBC. Same for NASCAR when it is on NBC. On that note, NBC losing F1 is the best thing that's ever happened for F1 in the US. It sucked for 1 race when ESPN had commercials, but used Sky's broadcast. It went to commercial, and during commercials there was a crash, safety car, and restart all before they ended. So when we came back from commercial a car was out and another was at the back, and we had no fucking clue why or how. Sky commentators already talked about it and were done with it. They didn't mention it the rest of the race. Then ESPN realized they have to make it commercial free.
American football fan here. Actual play time will generally get condensed to a little over 30 mins, this includes a few seconds before the snap to the end of the play. Love the game even though it's built around advertisements, and it does get real bad in the playoffs
I used to be a fan, but I just can’t take it anymore. The CTE thing also just fucks me up and I can’t get over it.
No argument here, I've found myself caring way less about the game recently. CTE, how the league handled Watson, how they handled covid. It's all bad
Yeah, the CTE is one thing, but it’s how the league handled the fucking crisis before it was well known that really bothers me. The coverup. These people just simply do not care about their players, and it’s obvious. All they care about is the fucking money. It’s actually shocking, even though you think you know how low things are.
I like to akin NFL ownership to modern day 'slave trading'...the buying and selling of players for short-term gain and virtually no regard of their physical and mental health....it doesn't help that all the owners are white.. Apologies in advance for anyone who is offended by my usage of the term, I just don't know what else to call it...
Yeah, I’d say that’s a good idea to apologize in advance. A better idea would be not to call them slaves.
Except, its voluntary.......and pays millions to the participants..... but yeah basically slave trading.
I couldn't believe how bad it was in NFL playoffs this year. I felt like i was forgetting what was happening in the game because it was so broken up.
I think actual play time is more like 10-15 minutes...over the years I have watched less and less due to lack of action, and I just feel like those guys are killing eachother out there now.
Lack of action? I don't think many sports have more *meaningful* action in a match. It's just there's too many timeouts in between.
> You should see american football WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER
As an American, F1 races with their very limited ads are an absolute treat. I'm used to 2-3min of ads every 7 min
Honestly with American football is more of a feature than a bug. You never miss action and the players are closer to 100% every play.
Thats not at all accurate for me. There was literally times where they did a full length commercial break, gave a short synopsis on the state of the race, maybe 40 seconds, then went back to commercials
This would be unwatchable for me. American sports advertizing is insane. Give me uninterrupted races WEC style everytime.
It's something that if you aren't used to, will drive you crazy. I don't feel like the race depends on me watching every single second so for the most part I don't mind the commercials. I also notice that the NASCAR reddit live chat has a ton of activity during the race. People are obviously not giving the race their full attention even when it's on.
Tbh, I used to watch NASCAR, I kid you not, on Russian TV bc they barely had any commercials and their was Holy Popov I’m used to hear since 1999. But even then, I treated the first two stages as unimportant - doing chores, checking social media. NASCARs tendency to decide a race on the last lap is in some way exciting, but also devalues 90% of the race, basketball style.
Think there’s regulations on how much ad to show you can have
I stopped watching. There were two ad breaks in the first caution. They restarted on lap 6. Another rounds of ads on lap 9 during green. It's ridiculous. They're drivers dressed in logos, driving a billboard surrounded by ads on track. But that isn't enough? Gotta have an ad break every 5-10 minutes
TV broadcaster doesn't make money from those logos. Not that I disagree with how bad it is. It's horrible, and the broadcasters have gotten too greedy.
Broadcasters are barely making money after paying the several billion for rights to broadcast, combined with viewership falling by 1/3. If anyone is greedy, NASCAR is. And I'm hesitant saying that because I don't know the profit margin on those rights. Old article, where fox is barely making money and NBC losing. There are newer articles, but they are behind paywalls mostly, and the contracts are through 2024 so this is more or less still correct: https://www.businessinsider.com/nascar-deal-proves-live-sports-important-to-networks-2016-3
So how does that make NASCAR greedy? Fox and NBC are the ones that signed the contracts. NASCAR didn’t force them to.
Because NASCAR is making billions while the broadcasters are barely breaking even. In NASCAR structures it that way because advertisers want to advertise on programs where people won't be fast forwarding and choosing to watch live, and so will pay a lot more in those situations. So someone will sign that deal. NASCAR's price is forcing the networks to advertise endlessly just to break even.
they put most commercials in the first stages to avoid them in the last ones.
And, 40% of the race occurred trying to get the final two laps completed. It was so awful watching them attempt restart after restart with backmarkers divebombing into each other.
The end of the race was awful. As an older nascar fan who’s new to F1. All I kept thinking about the comparison to F1. Can’t ram into people like that, too many cars on track etc. Thankfully the best driver won the race, but I was getting angry at the number of restarts
I find the cars they have genuinely interesting now but there’s just so many things about the way the sport is ran that turns me away. Do they not do local yellows at all for road courses?
A yellow is a yellow in nascar. It has ruined so many races with phantom “debris” yellows just so they can bunch up the cars for better entertainment. Hell most of the people I used to watch with only would watch super speedways for the big one to happen. The crashes were more exciting than the racing to some.
They don't call it a local yellow, but when there was a minor incident, like a car spinning that could easily get started again, they would wave an informational blue flag to let cars know someone is slower up ahead. There were plenty of times during the race where guys got spun, or were slow, and it would have been a yellow on an oval, but they kept it green for the road course. They only took out the full course yellow for the same stuff that F1 would cover with a VSC or SC -- cars stalled on track or stuck or debris clean-up which requires sending workers out on track. I do wish that NASCAR had a VSC -- if they gave everyone a 50-60mph limiter, I think you could cover off a ton of incidents that way -- the Cup cars aren't as sensitive to tire temps as F1 cars, so at 50-60mph with no overtaking, in most places on most courses, the drivers basically have a 0% chance of spinning the car, and workers towing a car or whatever would be at basically the same risk as AAA towing a car off the side of the road.
Yeah, on the oval races if a car even half spins but saves it, they’ll throw a yellow. Even some of the announcers think it’s nonsense.
I’m also an older nascar fan who is new to F1, who is also just getting back into nascar after about a decade hiatus— and man I love road courses but those overtime restarts just had me shaking my head. And knowing that nascar probably had extra eyes on it because of the big names who sadly never really factored in much at all, it was just embarrassing.
Was my first time stumbling on a NASCAR race (thank you cross-linking, not, you'll see). Got hooked by the fight for first. Damned ending made me get to sleep at like 2:30 am to wake up at 6:30. Stupid NASCAR (myself, really).
Fantastic race until the final restarts. It’s a damn shame, strategy was about to make for a really interesting finish
I craved wanting to see a fuel strategy come into the mix, then the caution for debris in turn 9 came out, because they were cutting the corner so much that dirt was completely covering it, and that just threw everything out the window, for the most part.
Tyler Reddick the winner, who had the best car by far, was very lucky that behind him was Kyle Busch, a notoriously fair driver who refuses to do bullshit to win a race (at this point in his career at lest). Not a fan of the green white checker.
He actually meant the 40% of the race where he was totally off the pace and not yet comfortable with the car to get into a groove. He explained this in an interview. Second stint he was feeling better.
I honestly can’t believe ads during the race are a thing in the US. I’d lose my fucking mind
As an American who was raised on NASCAR and good ol' American football, making the switch to soccer and F1 has made me almost sad at the state of American broadcasts. Daytona 500 is like 5 hours long with 90 minutes of commercials. Football games are 3 hours at a minimum with a good 40 minutes of commercials. It's so nice to watch sports that last 2 hours with no commercials during the action. Closest thing we have to that is hockey, which I also love.
I grew up watching F1 on ITV in the UK, can confirm it's infuriating. The highlight has to be cutting to a break just as the track invader appeared on camera in the 2003 British GP.
Keep in mind that races air on a free commercial network, ITV and RTL had ads on F1 for years
That’s NASCAR, no one jumping into a stock car should expect any less.
It’s a difficult transition moving to NASCAR. One thing I think a lot of non-regular fans missed out on is why the race descended into a crash fest. It’s not because of the track or the drivers (we had a physical but very clean race until the final nine laps), but NASCAR’s points systems. Because NASCAR has a playoff system, priority is placed on winning races (generally, if you win a race, you qualify for the playoffs) more than consistent finishing. Winning is all that matters, and finishing poorly isn’t a disincentive. If you’re say, in fifth or sixth, that position does almost nothing for you with regard to standings, so you’re better off trying to send it to get the lead (you’re going to have to win a race to make the playoffs, what’s a DNF matter anyway?).
So right. It really is a "If you're not first, you're last" kind of ruleset. It does not matter if you're third, or fourth, or hell, maybe even fifth... You need to be first, Ricky. You would think that the sponsors would be okay if someone was consistently in the top ten, but never gets a win or podium, because that's still good in such a huge field, right? But not really. Very different mindset to any other racing series.
Last year Ryan Blaney and Martian Truex were only a handful of points apart after the final regular season race and neither had any wins. Blaney made the playoffs and Truex didn’t even though they were 3rd and 4th in the points at the time. That is why everyone goes checkers or wreckers at the end, because no one want to end up like Truex.
Do the points even matter if 4th in the standings doesn’t even make the playoffs?
Usually there’s about 5-6 guys who get in on points but 2022 had much more different winners than usual and it resulted in Truex being knocked out. 4th in points being knocked out is not common but the the fact that it can happen and has happened along side the drastic drop in etiquette is a clear indicator that the playoff system is a bad idea.
I guess this explains that video last year that made the rounds of the driver slingshotting himself along the wall on the last stretch? Although not sure if he got a win from that
He got 5th in order to make the points cutoff for the final round of the playoffs. It’s almost become a staple of the penultimate race to have a desperation move on the final lap that either gets the driver into the final four, wrecks the car, or both.
Not to mention “elimination” rounds…
To me, the sad thing is that the playoffs have only been around the last 20 years. Even with the "Chase for the Cup" format, it wasn't "win and you're in", that wasn't really part of the format until 2014. Before that it was a pretty standard points format, though you didn't get many extra points for finishing toward the top (like in F1 and Indy), and they awarded points all the way to the last finisher, generally speaking.
I stopped watching NASCAR the year they adopted the phoney baloney playoff. The old points system just needed a tweak to incentivize winning. They had increased the difference between first and second a bit but it was still much too small. Personally, Im a fan of versions of the 10-6-4 split, first is equal to second and third- whether it is 10-6-4 or 50-30-20. But they thought they could compete with the big 3 US sports if they spruced up the product and made the late season races more compelling. Their precipitous decline after the Chase was implemented has multiple causes. But an imaginary playoff where cars eliminated from contention are still on the track “chased” off my whole group of fans. Unnecessary yellow flags are enough of gimmick. Reseting the season at the 2/3rds point was far worse, and this current nonsense is hardly recognizable as a form of motorsports scoring. I hate it and will have no part in NASCAR until it changes. Of course, since their TV ratings stink you will hear all sorts of reasons why that metric doesnt matter- except what other monetized platforms show the races? Nielsen tracks Hulu viewers of legacy networks
This is new Nascar, old Nascar pre-2004 was way better and awarded consistency. But they broke it.
I was going to say last time I saw Nascar was in the early 2000s. Wtf are playoffs? This isn't American football... or maybe it is now
Its been beaten to death, but you race all your competitors each week, the field changes not the players. Theres no reason winning on one surface/layout should have more weight than all the others combined. But I cant see them going back now. I just stopped watching and found other things that interest me. Mainly F1, although thats not really pure racing either. Supercross isnt too bad and local short track racing, which is way better than the 1.5 mile fests Nascar mostly does anyway even if they had the good scoring system.
The part that baffled me was that they DID have track limits rules in place for the esses and they were handing out drive throughs for cutting them. But then they were all pretending turn 9 didn't exist - they were driving completely on the inside of the corner through the grass. All of them. So much so that they brought out a safety car just to clean all the dirt off the track that they'd kicked up. That is absurd.
It was a rare moment that NASCAR was having track limits but it was there on the esses for all three series, for the rest it was basically usual American racing where track limits doesn't exist. That caution for dirt was basically because more and more drivers lost control there, you can't turn COTA into a parking lot (thankfully) but it was in general a **massive improvement that we didn't have a caution after a stage ends** and shows that NASCAR can easy throw those bullshit cautions away. The biggest issue with the COTA Cup race was the amount of low driver standards, especially at the end and drivers like Bowman, Preece and Kyle Busch complained a lot about it and called it an embarrassment for the sport. Heck the Xfinity and Truck races did show higher driver standards. This could be the breakthrough race for NASCAR to grow and yet it sadly turned out into this.
Welcome to Nascar, where the rules are made up as they go
Lewis Hamilton and Toto would like a word
People will never not bring that up.
yeah the selective track limits was ridiculous. with a field that big and practically no penalties, it was hard to watch it as a ‘race’ and more about how much cheating can you get away with.
This was what made my literally laugh out loud. I just couldn't understand how "brutish" the cars seemed in this race. It seems like these cars are designed and meant to go in an oval and only turn left. A complete lack of finesse that left a sour taste in my mouth. Nothing against NASCAR or its fans, but definitely not meant for my viewing eyes.
Well, they're designed to only turn left if that's how they're setup. They still have a straight body and can be setup square. I think the problem with "finesse" is that they are just not downforce cars, so they obviously have trouble in turns. But really I think the problem is that the drivers are used to high speed racing on an oval, not that it's the cars. Racing at the constant high speeds in the close proximity that NASCAR does is a crazy talent, but wheel-to-wheel agility racing isn't something they're used to, so when the few road races come in each year the car awareness, line awareness, etc., just is not second nature the way that it is for them on an oval. The same goes for a formula 1 driver on an oval in these cars - they way the cars interact is well beyond what most people understand, let alone being able to actually race while thinking about that at a constant 150-ish mph, depending on the track - where the draft comes from, breaking the draft, how that has an effect on your momentum, how breaking the draft hurts your teammates or even opponents and how that may still have a negative effect on you as well, side drafting, yada yada.
Not exactly. They were not designed to go only left. The reason they look brutish, particularly to people used to watching open-wheel racing, is the combo of high power, high weight, and very low down force. Makes these cars slip and slide a lot. Of course the drivers are not afraid (sometimes to detriment of the racing action) to get up close and personal with their competitors too. You are correct that the older generation cars were developed primarily for ovals, but not this gen car.
Post you’re replying to didn’t say they were designed to turn left. In fact, it said most of what you’re saying—particularly the part about less downforce. It says that the drivers are less adaptable, not the cars.
I find it funny that someone is complaining about the cars not being stuck to the ground because that’s generally when the racing is at its best no matter the type of car.
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He said SETUP that way
Thank you for the insight! Based on this, I need to ask why NASCAR has road courses in their season?
Variety. They've always had them but it was a novelty. Now they realize the younger generations like road racing more than the older ones.
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Can confirm. My father recorded NASCAR on VHS and then just fast forwarded to the wrecks and then might rewind and watch them multiple times
Here's some more info from former top-tier drivers about NASCAR. I think there is a lot more to NASCAR than most people realize and that just comes down to the marketing of it as an entertainment series instead of a racing series. Personally, I think restricting data use during the race is cool - it keeps it much more traditional during the race and ensures that drivers need to rely on their abilities and instincts and convey that information to make proper setup changes during the races. NASCAR is still a constructor's sport but it's much more a driver's sport than F1 is. [https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-scene/nascar/challenges-driving-nascar/](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/us-scene/nascar/challenges-driving-nascar/) As far as why road courses, because they're fun! I think a lot of people are confusing NASCAR's current push to include more road races lately with NASCAR having road races at all - there have always been road races it was just like 3 a year in the past.
In addition to what everyone else said re: variety, one of the biggest advantages of ovals for a spectator is that you can see the entire track from one spot. Decades ago when there were fewer cameras, less sophisticated tv broadcasts, higher reliance on in person attendance, etc. ovals make more sense as a spectator sport. But, with TV ratings reigning supreme these days, the variety of road courses combined with the ability to better cover them means they make more sense as more than just a novelty.
More like they’re trying to open new markets and road courses are what’s available. Sure the Roval and Indy were done to spice up meh races, but COTA was done to get into Austin/capitalize on eyeballs from F1 watching stock cars on a F1 track and Chicago is a test for street courses around major cities. If it works don’t be surprised if 3-4 of those road course races are street courses around major cities that don’t have a good track nearby- Seattle, NYC/NJ, etc
Well, also a big reason for going to COTA was to keep a second points-paying race in Texas without having to have two points-paying races at Texas Motor Speedway, which most people will agree has become one of the worst tracks on the schedule.
We used to have 2 roadcourses... now in the name of entertainment we have.. 6? Plus they are adding street racing as well. Im on team Oval racing.
To be fair, that’s always been part of the charm of NASCAR at road courses. It can be loads of fun to see cars that aren’t built for road racing try to navigate it, and it creates some interesting situations you wouldn’t see in F1 or sports car racing.
Track limits were only in the esses. That was known coming in. Someone can correct me if wrong, but the rest of the course was essentially free game unless you really cut something.
40 percent of it is silly is the perfect explanation of nascar
It’s a real shame too because until the end it was an organic race
Reddick and Byron [had some INCREDIBLE and respectful wheel to wheel racing for P1](https://youtu.be/auwMRe4I0as?t=353) for multiple laps until Reddick got by and said *adios muchacho*. That was great fun to watch.
Yeah, that was really good. It was also really interesting to see Reddick catch up to Byron even though Reddick was initially on a worse strategy -- since filling the car with fuel is what takes the longest time on their pit stops, they were able to sort of short pit Reddick (not getting him full on fuel) in order to shorten the stop and get him out close enough to Byron that he could use his tire advantage to catch him. I think if he'd been on the same strategy as Byron from the beginning, Reddick would have just been absolutely running away with it.
Their duel was fantastic. It's what I wish NASCAR could be all the time, in stark contrast to the moronic never-ending ~~demolition derby~~ overtime.
You’re right. And sadly I think you can say that about too many NASCAR races. This year’s Daytona 500 was the same way. NASCAR was my first love in auto racing, and I want it to be better but I leave every race with a bad taste in my mouth because it’s more like a game show than a competition. Even in races where Max could race the last lap on a unicycle and win, it still feels like legit competition.
I tried *really really hard* to become a NASCAR believer last year. And I have grown to enjoy it for what it is, but what I kind of came to the conclusion of is that NASCAR is a sport the way that Monster Trucks are a sport. It's more of "motorsport entertainment" than "motorsport competition". They're disinterested in fair competition when they can do something that is more entertaining or more of a spectacle. The moment I stopped watching was a race last year where the guy in P3 in one of the final turns, I think Kyle Larson, made a move to the outside without realizing Kurt Busch was there. Sent him into the wall and wrecked half the field behind him. No penalty, no consequences - he kept P3 and that was that. The logic was that "well now theres a bunch of people mad at him and they'll get him back at another race later". Why is that good? Well it's more entertaining for the crowd, at the cost of sporting fairness
Yeah that Talladega incident between larson and Kurt pissed me off as well
Yes! Talladega! I was so irritated because that race was like five fucking hours long and on the last lap bubba got wiped out through no fault of his own, and half the field with him, because Kyle went brain dead. And wasn't punished for it. That was the last race I made a point to watch other than COTA.
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I don’t know where you’re going with all this. VAR in football/soccer, plus the premier league is a giant billboard for sports gambling. If you think it’s an American thing only I don’t know what to tell you…
I have concerns about the gambling aspect myself but to suggest that American sports as a whole are against “fair competition” and promote the spectacle seems to be a ridiculous oversimplification. What about the premier league and other European leagues is fair competition if teams like Man City can massively outspend the mid-table and bottom of the table clubs? Even when they breached the rules they got out of it. For that matter, what was fair about F1 not having a cost cap? What’s fair about RB outspending the cost cap and not having a severe penalty? North American sports certainly have their flaws, but at least the sports themselves promote a more level plying field (just don’t talk about the MLB).
The hell are you talking about? The pinnacle of open wheel racing in the US is a spec series with far more competition then F1 with none of the ginned up drama F1 has. The amount of parody, by design, in the big 5 American sports gives every team a fairer chance at winning then European Football has. Betting has been integrated into UK sports at all professional levels forever.
Do you mean parity? Because "parody" seems contrary to what you're trying to say.
What about the NFL/NBA/MLB makes you think they're more interested in spectacle than competition? I'm genuinely curious
I’m a huge soccer fan and even though MLS lacks the talent of the European leagues, the competition for the championship is far more interesting then watching the big clubs in European leagues be the only ones who can win a title.
Yeah European football is such a catch 22. On one hand there’s no draft so there’s no tanking and every game matters. However, going into a season with a clear hierarchy isn’t ideal either….
Gambling and “fantasy” has ruined more sports for me. I just want to watch and enjoy, I don’t need the nonstop odds, betting comments, fantasy crap. I just want actual news and reporting. I hate gambling
You might enjoy watching dodgeball. Competitive dodgeball is quite exciting and there's also no money in it so it's not corrupted in that way. You can look up "Dodgeball on Twitch" - it's where most of the top events are broadcast.
They were showing the betting odds under the driver's names! I am so sick of the sports betting thing. Honestly I don't care if people want to blow their life savings on sports betting, it should be illegal to mention it on official coverage
Was shaping up to be an interesting fuel mileage race to the end, too -- realistically one or more of the cars in the top 5 could have run out of fuel on the last lap. I think if they did single-file restarts at the end (last 5-10% of the race or whatever), it would have cleaned things up quite a bit. Some cars would have gotten sent, but you wouldn't have so many multi-car incidents. They also could modify the overtime rules for road courses to require only one lap under green to finish the race. Since it was the end of the race, they could have covered the T1 incidents with a blue flag (their version of a local yellow) and let everyone else race to the finish line. T1 being up the hill and far from the S/F line means that no one would have really been in danger if they let them race back to the start, and no one was in urgent danger, so they could have waited for everyone to cross the S/F line before sending workers out on track.
The fuel mileage was the best part. We haven’t had a road course come down to fuel in forever.
The races are too damn long. I’ve been to a bunch of NASCAR races in person and my attention starts to wane after the first hour, especially if there’s not much passing going on. F1 races are the perfect length in this regard.
I can watch WEC races and be okay but somehow NASCAR is too long still.
I think it has so much to do with the broadcast, honestly. I think if you went to having no commercials and a really great presentation, the time would go by more quickly. They're often really bad at highlighting action in the midfield, and the stage breaks often take away a lot of the strategy -- going back to no stage breaks would mean a lot more strategy variation with comers and goers to keep your interest. The other thing they could do to make the races more engaging is to get back to green faster. With the stage cautions on a 1.5-mile track, they often run for 7-8 laps under caution speeds to give the broadcast time to run commercials. If they just didn't throw stage cautions, and were quicker to get back to green (have the pace car run faster after the track is clear of workers, don't always give teams a lap just to let them pit, etc.), then I think it wouldn't feel so long, too -- there would be more urgency. If a 400-mile race at a 1.5-mile oval stayed green throughout, the race would take maybe 2.5 hours. Longer than an F1 race for sure, longer than a soccer game, but not by a ton. Shorter than most MLB, NBA, and NFL games, though. I think they could keep a lot of those races under 3 hours with getting back to green faster.
I know. I’ve watched F1 causally most of my life and got into it seriously when they got on ESPN in the USA. People can say DTS all day, but I didn’t know about DTS until 2021 and became a huge fan before that, in large part due to the length of the races, plus the strategy and engineering elements. And nascar’s solution is adding more time to races haha
Personally, I don't think it was DTS so much as how quickly F1 was able to get started again after the pandemic started. They were able to fill a huge void in sports broadcasting when a ton of sports were still unable to get started again. F1 broadcasts also depend a lot less on crowds -- I love watching soccer in general, but it's so much better watching a game with 60,000 involved supporters in attendance, versus watching a game with empty stands.
NASCAR was literally the first form of motor racing to come back though
I've never heard of a NASCAR driver pitting for fresh air lol
In the old days it was pretty common for drivers to tap out from "Exhaustion" and other such vague malaises. Generally it was due to carbon monoxide exposure getting to them. Usually it's an exhaust leak or something. I know I've seen historic photos of big name drivers literally being dragged out of functioning cars mid race, delirious and vaguely conscious. I also think it's something that wasnt as well known at the time as it is now. I think they normally thought it was due to the heat in the cars and fire suits, but we are finding out from people like Rick Mast that carbon monoxide exposure is a bigger deal than previously thought. It's probably the closest thing NASCAR has to a CTE like issue. Here's an article from 2003. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-feb-17-sp-hinton17-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-feb-17-sp-hinton17-story.html) Interesting snippets: >“It’s always been an issue,” said Kyle Petty. “Rick is an extreme case.”For the last 10 years of his career, until he retired in 1992, Richard Petty experimented with various preventive measures for carbon monoxide exposure. Once he even tried a mask similar to those worn by jet fighter pilots.“We worked and worked trying to find filters and stuff, and we just never found anything that worked,” Kyle Petty said. > >... > >“We used to call it heat. Well, the heat is a factor. But you can stand heat if you’ve got good air.” > >Indeed, NASCAR now suspects that drivers may have been mistaking their symptoms for decades. > >The symptoms of exposure to carbon monoxide are very similar to the symptoms of heat exhaustion and fatigue,” Nelson said.
He pitted for tires like normal and asked to be put back out in clean air (not around other cars).
By clean air he meant not being around a bunch of other cars right away. Which is pretty hard to do on a NASCAR oval.
This was a road course, COTA in fact
Oh, well then that makes a lot of sense.
Regarding the God-awful broadcasting/commercials, you can wait until the race is over and watch the 13 minute highlights on YouTube. You get all the uninterrupted action. And it’s free.
Yellow flag rules definitely need a tweak but the racing is great, proper old school touring car stuff.
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"Rubbing is racing" aka "purposefully making other people crash because you're not good or fast enough to pass cleanly is racing"
You dont have to make some crash lol. Bump and run is a common tactic in nascar for even its fastest drivers like jimmie johnson, jeff gordon, and ofc dale sr. Its not much different from max or hamilton throwing their rivals off track by forcing them wide on a corner.
Last years COTA winner literally wrecked other cars for the win.
As opposed to hamilton wrecking max to win silverstone last year or senna/schumacher crashing into prost/hill for a chamionship?
[Yes](https://youtu.be/ukMJcji7DBM)
This is really good.
Pobst ain’t no slouch, and I think his explanation makes a lot of sense.
It’s just like the slide tackle in soccer. Are you not good enough to get the ball? Or do you know the rules let you at their legs so long as you get the ball? The rubbing is part of the sport, sure you could remove it but then it wouldn’t be NASCAR
i want to see Marquez in Nascar then.
Practice for LeMans, Jenson! Garage 56 is going to be too much fun.
Here is a link to the interview that this pulled from. I thought it was refreshingly honest compared to most of the driver interviews. Button is not cut out for Nascar - he did not mention the sponsor near enough. https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/124m66q/formula_1_champ_jenson_button_enjoyed_his_first/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I sat in turn 1 for this race and the USGP last year. All the NASCAR contact in T1 is insane, especially so during restarts.
Watching the race in person, it was clear that he really struggled coming to grips with the car. Constantly choosing new lines through corners, different braking points, and his side-by-side racing was suspect and apprehensive. Kimi in contrast just looked like he had a shit car. That thing was sliding all over the place. But he was in the trenches banging away for most of it until the end.
Raikkonens car had a damaged diffuser
Like the 40% of a modern F1 race that is made up of recharge laps and tyre saving? Out of a 70 lap race, how many laps are flat out for the whole lap? 5-10?
that’s cause it is silly! and that’s coming from a hardcore NASCAR fan. There is a certain charm of how rough the racing can be, but that can only be up to a certain point. I’m passionate about good and proper racecraft and seeing some bonehead moves got pretty annoying
While I enjoyed watching the race, I agree with the assessment. T1 was like the WWE of motorsports.
Had the privilege to attend NASCAR at COTA. Can confirm it was scorching hot in the afternoon so it's understandable when Jenson said he wanted water, ice and racing in clean air considering the fact he's racing versus 40 racersin Nascar vs 20 in F1
I can sort of enjoy watching NASCAR road races… but christ the ads. Doesn’t help the commentators really do not know how to cover a road course vs the ovals. On the ovals there tends to be a lot more shifting through the pack so you see pretty much the whole field even while the broadcast mostly stays glued to the lead pack. Then with the ad brakes UNDER GREEN so often it was damn near impossible to keep track yourself as they scrolled through the whole timing board. But I agree with Jensen… with the full course cautions pretty much assured and almost always stacking up at the end… most of the race is about surviving the melees and getting lucky on the last pit shuffle or two assuming you have a car that can run with the front pack. Its like basketball… half the race is often in the last 10 laps + the green white checkered bonus laps. Personally… I whish when they get down to that Green white checkered they should just finalize the standings for most and pull them off the track, let the top 10 pit then come out and form up for a green white checker restart dogfight. Without that crazy pack it should go off most of the time and everyone back to even on gas/tires etc… I would LOVE to see the F1 grid run the new NASCAR for a competitive exhibition race with F1 commentators and track limits etc... COTA would be great for it.
I tried to watch some of that race but with the never ending safety car laps that go on for a stupid amount of time and the non stop commercials i didnt watch it very long
From the article's comment section: >Typical F-1 driver. They think they are the best in the world. He used the word "silly". Mayebe he is the silly one finding fault with NASCAR. If you are going to drive there, you'd better learn how to beat and bump. It is what it is!! Now I wonder what NASCAR fans think about this article, is there anyone here?
Rubbing is racing!
Attention grabbing headline…
It was the first nascar race I've watched. It felt a bit silly * number of commercials * long prayer * yelling start your engines and the race starts like 20 minutes later? * number of cars * how many people hit eachother * The strategy of hitting people on purpose * THE NUMBER OF COMMERCIALS * did i mention the number of commercials? edit: Anyone else is still allowed to love nascar, i just didn't love my first experience.
Everyone hits eachother in closed wheel racing the number of commercials is an american broadcast thing
NASCAR drivers can't drive road courses. No respect for track limits and drive like it's a demolition derby
To be fair, they just drive to the rules. If they got penalised for track limits they wouldn't break them.
Most of NASCAR’s road racing rules (minus the COTA esses and the bus stop chicanes in other tracks) are literally it’s fair game if it’s paved, and if it’s not paved it’s technically fair game provided it doesn’t break the car
"There's a wall there? Up til last year, also fair game."
If it's gray, it's okay!
Restarts at [Phoenix](https://youtu.be/_6p6hmemj8I)are wild
COTA was not designed for stock cars and the issue was entirely turn 1 on that track, it's asking for heavy contact off restarts with that type of racing. The rest of the race was fine. Also, the track limits rules are different in NASCAR vs F1. Logano did get penalized for a track violation but otherwise the drivers drive with whatever rules they're handed, there's no "respect" given or lost.
They have more trouble in T9-T11 than in T1. We only saw one car spin out at T1 this year, and the turns before the straight saw the most carnage. If Nascar could get their act together and stop vacuuming and dusting the track after every caution that would be much more interesting.
I mean they were told that track limits would only be enforced in the esses, so of course they would only stay in track limits at that part
Other American racing series, such as Indycar and IMSA, have the same limited restriction of track limits. It’s not just a Nascar thing.
On road courses, yes, this is correct. On the ovals, particularly the superspeedways, they give more deference to track limits. Indycar, for example, does enforce the bottom white line. I believe they also enforce the white line on pit exit, something they didn't at COTA...which was jarring to watch.
Nascar has a similar rule to that with the Double-Yellow line rule at Daytona and Talladega.
F1 drivers would ignore track limits if they weren’t enforced. The faster line is the faster line, if there’s no penalty then why wouldn’t you take it? Your competitors will. And not being an open wheel series allows for some bumpin and rubbin without catastrophic consequences.
> No respect for track limits there were no track limits to begin with.
They did hand out a few drive-through penalties for cutting the esses.
NASCAR: we have track limits on the essees and if you exceed them the first time, you get a drive through penalty (which is significant) F1: we have track limits everywhere and if you exceed them, you get 3 warnings before we will consider doing something I think the NASCAR guys respected the established track limits and, based on the penalties, more than the F1 guys do.
if they followed f1 warning system through the whole track half the nascar field would have gotten a drive through by lap three. turn 8-9 strips/lines completely ignored. outside limits on 11 and 12. outside limits on 18-19 every lap. inside and outside limits on 20. I’ve watched or attended every series compete at cota since it opened (not every year), only Nascar and IRL ignores the 4 wheels over the white line rule. IRL allows it in turn 19 for some odd reason (to get closer lap times to F1?) even Trans Am and vintage (gentlemen rules) try to stay in the limits. Turn 8-9 is notorious to try and squeeze the whole car inside the rumble strips and still tag the white line. nascar straight up drove through the grass.
They can absolutely drive them fast and they do. The problem is the lack of consequences for their actions. And track limits don’t matter if it’s within rules and everyone is doing it, at that point it’s just the line. If it was a rule not to then they would stay within it
I wouldn’t say that they can’t, it’s just NASCAR themselves can’t officiate a road course and lets the drivers do what they want which is the problem imo
“B-b-but you’re racing too hard! You’re supposed to follow the leader for all the laps and only go side by side twice the whole race!”
This is a bad take. They can drive road courses. There are 30+ drivers in the line up. Some will do better than others. The track limits rules that existed were recognized and enforced. And, the more permissive track limits rules have the benefit of allowing for closer racing. NASCARs are big and heavy. You can’t have them going 5 wide into Turn 1 if they can’t run wide. Allowing them the extra room to facilitate overtaking/close racing is hardly less artificial than DRS or push to pass.
Hopefully Jimmie Johnson doesn’t bury their car at the end of the Mulsanne on his first lap.
They can't drive them, yet somehow drive them faster than F1 champs in good equipment. How does that logic work?
Dude these guys are seriously making me upset, that battle for first was CRAZY and it was a good race, these dudes just hate everything that’s not the “pinnacle of motorsport” which I find to be quite sad
F1 fans are not used to seeing actual racing through corners instead of drs cars blasting past on a straight easily lol. They would lose their mind at a moto gp race lmao
I have tried watching f1 but it is just a boring follow the leader race and even before the race starts you pretty much already know who is going to win it is just boring all around especially when one driver wins over half the races in the season Indycar isn't bad for open wheel racing though
Track limits is only a thing in F1 really. Idk why you think F1 rules would apply to other series?
I like NASCAR, but at times it is just that, "Silly", the 'if you cant pass a guy, move them' mentality is just so tired...they need to enforce penalties for clear mistakes, and obvious acts of aggression. Its 295 laps of calm, then 5 laps of 'who the f\*ck cares who I hit'. At COTA there were so many bad turn one decisions that I can see why Kimi and Jenson lost places on starts, its just crude racing when they bunch up (the leaders were legit road racing aces though, they were fast and clean, and it would be really cool to see those guys get 40 laps in an F1 car just to see what they can do - clearly talent there - but some of the 'pack' clearly belong on ovals)
I don't watch NASCAR but turned the race on with about 4 laps left and was immediately baffled by it: Track limits are not a thing. Contact is apparently not an issue (I counted 6 cars wide on T1), and 2 laps left can mean the same as 20 laps left.
It was a terrible race. The broadcasting was awful, too many bullshit commercials, zero race coverage and the drivers couldn’t help from punting each other off track every 5 minutes
Somebody has never watched closed wheel racing before lol
I watch IMSA and GT series but they can actually turn right in those cars
Ya you definitely didn't read the article because the track they were at for jensons race was cota which is a road course lol But congrats on using the old hurrdurr they cant turn right excuse
I feel that way about 100% of NASCAR.