Et Tu, NASCAR?

[69hurstolds]

MSN

FFS. I did read the article, but the stupidity of NASCAR to think people want EVs to replace what they're doing? And manufacturers to think those same people want to drive EVs due to going to a NASCAR race? No. I'm no marketing master, but race on Sunday, sell on Monday worked then, but not for EV. I see a couple issues, at least, with a 3 hour-ish all-out 500 mile race. What battery pack can last that long? One pit stop and you're down for at LEAST 10 minutes at current rate of charging. What, you going to swap out battery packs along with tires in 12 seconds? What safety issues as far as wrecks/track fires are being considered? Color me skeptical.

Regardless, EVs for NASCAR? Late to the game, aren't we?

The day I get excited to see EV's racing is the day toasters can fly...

Ok, forget that. NO! Just say NO! 🙂

 

[pagrunt]

MSN

FFS. I did read the article, but the stupidity of NASCAR to think people want EVs to replace what they're doing? And manufacturers to think those same people want to drive EVs due to going to a NASCAR race? No. I'm no marketing master, but race on Sunday, sell on Monday worked then, but not for EV. I see a couple issues, at least, with a 3 hour-ish all-out 500 mile race. What battery pack can last that long? One pit stop and you're down for at LEAST 10 minutes at current rate of charging. What, you going to swap out battery packs along with tires in 12 seconds? What safety issues as far as wrecks/track fires are being considered? Color me skeptical.

Regardless, EVs for NASCAR? Late to the game, aren't we?

The day I get excited to see EV's racing is the day toasters can fly...

Ok, forget that. NO! Just say NO! 🙂

Now think about it, all the need is some old Aurora & Tyco engineers from the '60's & '70"s to design how to get those rails into the surface of the track that can handle engough juice to keep 43 cars running for 500 miles. They could even get magnets to help hold the cars to the track like those old Magnatraction cars which I like to run on our tracks. Down sides would be that big slot in the middle of the rails, limited passing, have to make sure you have the right diodes so several cars can run the same rail & guys stong enough to put the car back on the track when it jumps the slot.

 

[popeye1978]

During at least one of the oil embargoes in the '70s, during one season all the NASCAR Winston Cup races were 10% shorter than usual -- the Daytona 500 was in reality the "Daytona 450" with the first green flag flying at the beginning of Lap 21, Laps 1 - 20 were not run. The reason given was national solidarity & fuel conservation, I am surprised that in the years since the environmental movement has not made an overwhelming ecological argument of the "uselessness" of -- and just talking Grand National / Winston Cup / whatever-it-is-now -- up to 43 cars running in a circle for 400 miles, 36 weeks a year (and that's just the race -- I've omitted practice & qualifying). If such an argument has been made, it appears the car companies & the race sanctioning bodies have succeeded with an argument that motor racing provides valuable R&D that ultimately makes passenger cars that much better ... or maybe they just have the $$$ to overcome & ignore arguments to the contrary.

Kurt Busch won the Nextel Cup in 2003 due to consistently finishing very well -- he won only 1 race the entire season -- which caused grumbling with the networks because that had been Year 3 of new broadcast deals and the ratings indicated that because the championship had been decided so early the past few years, fans were tuning-into NFL games and not the last races of the season, so where's the Return on Investment to the advertisers? ... gone were the days of the championship coming down to the last race ala Earnhardt / Wallace / Martin in '89 and Kulwicki & the Underbird in '92. So enter the current era of gimmicks such as playoffs & elimination rounds & playoff points & stage racing. Me personally, I've stopped following the Trucks and Grand National as closely as I used to -- never was a big fan of the Sportsman series, and yes, I refer to them by their historical names as I no longer care to keep track of who has the naming rights -- because I don't like stage racing and all of the guys with personality that I watched growing-up have either retired or are in the twilight of their career.

BIG turnoff was in 2011, ABC/ESPN/NASCAR made a big deal that "never before have the top two [Stewart & Edwards] been so close in points going into the last race!" without mentioning that was the first year of a simplified points system (a win under old system was 125 points, under new system it was ~45)

In 2023, Tony Stewart was on Kenny Schrader's Wallace's podcast and made a point that betting has changed the "how" NASCAR enforces things -- if a driver or owner says something contrary to the "NASCAR company line," NASCAR no longer issues you a few pit road speeding penalties in the following race (which would now affect bets) but instead after the race takes your car back to NASCAR Tech Center to find technical violations that lead to monetary fines & point deductions.

All this to lead up to I think NASCAR the Sanctioning Body has lost touch with the reason people would want to consistently watch 500-mile races over a season (see how excited people were for the original idea behind the SRX series) so this EV is just another gimmick to try to get fans ... that and maybe ABB wanted more brand exposure while Hendrick is saying "what do you want me to do with the Garage 56 car?" ... the articles on racer.com didn't mention ABB putting charging stations at the racetracks, kind of important to the story.

Do I see NASCAR going full EV? I see a very low chance of it before 2030, before 2036 is 50/50 because I can't predict how EV technology will evolve.
I think more likely is a Hybrid V6 powertrain (or maybe with a Turbo 4) ... can't understand why the automakers have been ok with V8s & restrictor plates in NASCAR for so long while (my impression) V6s & Turbo-4s are selling more.

 

[69hurstolds]

I quit following NASCAR much after #3 hit the wall for the last time.

Use to be people took their kids to go smell fuel and rubber burning (along with your eyes). Pack a picnic lunch, get up in those stands and cheer for your favorite brand/driver/team. Kids got into it and even had the kiddie competitions in local roundy-round tracks and stuff like that. It was ENCOURAGED for kids to get into racing and such, within reason, obviously. Clem and Clem's son would build them a car right there in the barn. "Yee haw! Go git yer ma, Cletus, kuntry's kumin' ta town!" (I'm in South Carolina, so this is mostly true- Anyone's ever been to Darlington/Bristol/Rockingham tracks in the 80s/90s you KNOW it to be true). The torches were past on to the younger generation and kids WANTED the torch.

Today, the only racing the kids ever really see is the crap on the TV screen that comes out of their computer games. That is, if they can get their head out of their phones and social media. Attention spans are shorter, so races get boring to them quicker. A.D.D. abounds in the younger crowd moreso it seems. Vehicles are now more of a rolling appliance or iphone than a method of transportation.

But the entire article sort of slides to the idea of "If people want it, this is what we'll give them." Problem is, NASCAR hasn't listened to fans for YEARS now. Ever since they tried to make every car nearly the friggin' same. Fugg 'em. If they go broke, I kinda don't care. Besides, people in GENERAL aren't really digging on the EVs themselves. But the manufacturers are listening by not running to EVs as fast as they used to. Their sales figures prove it. Facts are facts.

 

[pagrunt]

One of the issues the I see that NASCAR has created on their own is the alienation of the true fan base, the ones which their roots were feed from. Corprate names that have no connection to the fans or racing, ending traditional races & given those rases/dates to tracks outside of the fan base (Southern 500 ring a bell?), removing the South out of it regarding it as PC or not, pushing the kids (18-25) to be the big names when most of us are used to rookies finally made it to the big races in the 30's after paying their dues in the lower level races. Jeff Foxworthy used to make those jokes about NASCAR which are now true. Gimicks like EV's won't make things better.

 

[Hurricane77]

Never been a fan of Nascar, but this is a complete head scratcher. I'm guessing the real big pushers behind this were ABB, Ford and Chevy and to a lesser extent Toyota (who has been less inclined to jump on the full EV bandwagon). I'm assuming Nascar was maybe strong armed into this by a few major sponsors. Though stranger things have happened.

Formula E has been apparently growing in popularity. They don't swap cars anymore, but races are only 45 minutes.

From a marketing perspective, this really shows that someone doesn't understand their target market. Right up there with the Bud Light fiasco.

 

[abbey castro]

I used to have one of those Laguna S3s

 

[joesregalproject]

I see the EV thing as a publicity stunt. Nascar will likely say they are developing it as experimental for as long as they can until people inevitably realize that they never actually intended for it to come to fruition. Probably a vain attempt to attract more sponsors and potentially another manufacturer (they've been trying to woo Honda for a while) who don't want to associate themselves with loud, polluting racecars.

I'm a big Nascar fan, in fact I'll be in attendance at the Pocono race this Sunday. I stopped following for a while during the Jimmy Johnson/Car of Tomorrow Era, which is around the time a lot of people lost interest, but I began following again when the Gen 6 cars came out and even more so with the current Next Gen cars. IMHO, the Next Gen cars are the best thing to happen to Nascar in a long time. They've made the racing much more competitive and they bear much closer resemblance to their showroom counterparts.

There's always going to be the people who want to cry that Nascar died when Dale hit the wall, but the racing is there, now, in 2024. It got mundane for quite a few years, but it has changed for the better. I'll admit the points system and the playoff format is weird and probably will be for the foreseeable future but it doesn't change the races. People also complain about lack of big name drivers as well. There are still big names at the track, they just aren't the same names from 20 or 25 years ago.

 

[joesregalproject]

One of the issues the I see that NASCAR has created on their own is the alienation of the true fan base, the ones which their roots were feed from. Corprate names that have no connection to the fans or racing, ending traditional races & given those rases/dates to tracks outside of the fan base (Southern 500 ring a bell?), removing the South out of it regarding it as PC or not, pushing the kids (18-25) to be the big names when most of us are used to rookies finally made it to the big races in the 30's after paying their dues in the lower level races. Jeff Foxworthy used to make those jokes about NASCAR which are now true. Gimicks like EV's won't make things better.

Nascar is always trying to bring in any sponsors they can. For a while they weren't looking into the legitimacy of all those sponsors very well (cough, cough... DC Solar). It's become exponentially more expensive to run a race team which is why it is so hard to get sponsors. Lots of longtime sponsors (Lowe's, Tide, Caterpillar, and very recently Hooters) didn't want to, or simply couldn't afford to spend the money to sponsor a car, and the ones who still do are almost all part-time sponsors.

 

[69hurstolds]

There's always going to be the people who want to cry that Nascar died when Dale hit the wall, but the racing is there, now, in 2024.

No crying in NASCAR. Unless you're Kyle Busch. For me, NASCAR didn't die when Earnhardt did. But I was an Earnhardt fan FIRST. General NASCAR fandom was down the totem pole. He was the ONLY reason I even took an interest in NASCAR to begin with in the 80s. Hands down the reason I even bothered to go to the races in the first place. Don't know about other places, but the Darlington races were a Beeyotch to get tickets to and wasn't worth the trouble for me post-Earnhardt. Gant made it fun to root for Oldsmobiles, and loved to hate Bill Elliot and Crusty Wallace as part of the "enemy", but I certainly enjoyed it while it lasted. When my favorite driver was suddenly gone, there wasn't much interest left in it for me, personally, so I quit going to the races, and it eventually lost my interest in watching it on TV. It progressively got worse with all the changing rules and in-fighting and other shenanigans. I don't miss it like I thought I would. It was akin to if they suddenly closed the doors to Yankee Stadium. NY Yankee fans all over the world would be lost. Not that I'd be sad about that, but they certainly would.

At this point, there's likely nothing that NASCAR could do to draw me back. I hope they continue for the fans that still like it, but I couldn't care less. This EV proposal BS is the last bit of boot-licking that isn't a great look for them. I hope they abandon it, but as pointed out, if the sponsors are willing to pay, NASCAR's willing to play.