With road racing series, you have to actually goto a race to see what happens.

With NA$CAR, you can just use a sharpie and number a bunch of M&M's... throw them in the toilet and flush it and you have your dose of NA$CRAP.

**** the France family.

 

What's so funny is that you guys are saying you hate short tracks but you love superspeedways and road courses. I go to Speed TV's message board occasionally and everyone there are the exact opposite. They want more short tracks and no road courses. Every one there are die hard NASCAR fans. Interesting.

Myself, I like the short tracks. They are the roots of stock car racing. I like the road courses, but 2 races a year is enough for me. There are too many 1.5 ovals (cookie cutter) tracks in NASCAR. To me, that was what was great about NASCAR, all the differently configured tracks they ran. It really brought the cream to the top, IMO.

 

Short tracks are so intense. If you hate NASCAR but have never watched Bristol under the lights in August, then you are REALLY MISSING OUT.

 

Yea NASCAR has its good and bad points.
Personally I think the racing action is good. The cars are evenly matched and it comes down to the driver, and crew to get the setup right. The races usually come down to the end and have several contenders.

On the other hand I don't like NASCAR for being too controlling of the sport. The fact that they control the cars shape and all aspects of its design take away the uniqueness many teams and cars used to have. I don't like NASCARS lack of tech or maybe its fear. I'd like them to simply use fuel injection engines for starters. In this reguad NASCAR is like the WWF of racing. Because the cars are actually the weak points of the show. They have taken all the advantages or disadvanteages out of each make's vehicle.

I am a fan of the Ausie V8 Supercar series and watch it often on Speed (NASCAR) TV. I'd love to see NASCAR go the route they have gone. The competition is close because they teams ore open to make adjustments and like racing from the last 100 years when your down and getting beat the only way to win is to work harder or smarter. Not complain to NASCAR that the rules should be changed. Thats really the most annoying part to NASCAR.

I happen to like open wheel IRL, CART and F1. Not for competition but for the balance of driver skill, car tech and power with teamwork and strategy. Each has to be on to win and if you're off a little you get beat bad. Sure Ferrari and Penske teams are on top but instead of complaining to F1 or IRL the other teams buckle down and get busy trying to beat them. McLaren is ready to bring out a new car and we'll see how it compares the the F2003 GR.

NHRA my opinon the best racing out there for sheer thrill and enjoyment!

 

As a sepectator, I agree that drag racing is the most enjoyable to watch... The burnouts, the crackling engines, the flames.. two shiny cars lining up, and launching down the straight in a quick race right in front of you.. Personally, I think its the most fun to sit and watch..

 

99SilverSS pretty much hit's it on the head as well. NASCAR is simply about driver skill. It isn't about cars, everything is made so no one has an advantage, and as someone colorfully pointed out earlier, outside of watching a favorite driver, the most exciting thing about NASCAR is watching the crashes! Think about that for a second! That's a pretty bad, but accurate statement.

But even though the NASCAR drivers no doubt have skill, I would think negotiating a road course that turns in different directions in variating degrees with cars that have different handling qualities and geometries, and engines that have different charactistics requires more skill than going around an oval, & avoiding wrecks to win. It's also more exciting for the fans, especially those who own a car like one on the track.

Gee, I expected this thread to have a life of just a few posts. Seems the news day(s) is slower than I thought.

 

ALMS-thats all i got to say.

 

Most people are quite passionate about their likes and dislikes when it comes to racing. The message board at www.speedtv.com is pretty interesting. I don't post there much, but I like to lurk and read what people say about the particular racing they enjoy.

I forgot to mention ASA. They use LS1 spec motors! Pretty cool!

 

originally posted by guionM
"But even though the NASCAR drivers no doubt have skill, I would think negotiating a road course that turns in different directions in variating degrees with cars that have different handling qualities and geometries, and engines that have different charactistics requires more skill than going around an oval, & avoiding wrecks to win. It's also more exciting for the fans, especially those who own a car like one on the track".


i agree 100% thats why i perfer to watch rally car racing. i think those guys are the most skilled drivers out there. they race on every surface in every type of weather. Nascar only races in dry weather. (boring)

 

Holy dog****s! Right... the $100 million dollar teams have no advantage whatsoever over the hundred thousand dollar teams at the back of the pack. Whatever you say sport.

Watching crashes, oh yeah, the pinnacle of motorsports according to NASCAR fans, which is why I don't consider NASCAR a sport anymore, aside from their road races and some exceptional short track events, its up there with the WWF.

97z28/m6 hits the nail on the head, its all about the ALMS, SCCA, NASA, OCRA, OCT, SVRA, FIA, F1, CART, F3000, CSRA, NHRA, IHRA, NSCA, etc. etc.

The reason SpeedTV now has all this NASCAR BS is because it was bought out by FOX, who destroyed what Speedvision was, a balanced motorsport channel... now that it is owned by FOX which has a stake in with the France family, it has turned into NASCAR vision, and all the little piggies have followed suit over to their messageboards... when it was Speedvision, they were in the minority.

If I'm gonna watch stock cars, I'll watch ASA or Trans Am.

As I said before, **** the France family for ruining NASCAR.

 

I grew up on NASCAR. I live dead in the heart of it. RCR's shop is less than 3 miles from my office. I went to high school with Ricard Childress' daughter Tina. My father and I made Richard's first restrictor plates for him back in '83 at my fathers tool and die business. The team only had a couple cars, and Dale was still in the blue/yellow Wrangler Monte Carlo back then. Lou LaRossa was Richards engine builder, and Richard hired him away from the job my dad gave him. We also made parts and did work for Bud Hutchens racing - that's Bobby Hutchen's dad. Bobby is now Childress' head engineer. Bobby races modifieds (#15) at local tracks. They are all great friends and truely nice folks.

I also went thru the Automotive Powerplants and Metallurgy courses at UNC-Charlotte with Mike Nelson and a couple other guys now working at Hendricks Motorsports. I met Randy Dorton and the shop guys and they are all great folks too.

I, like others who have already posted, got worn thin on NASCAR in the mid '90s. What turned me off is the intentional commercialization of it. Example - the new speedways that seat 100,000+ people have eliminated the original tracks that brought it all to life like Wilkesboro. I used to go to races and pay $25-35 for a ticket and griped a little. Now you can't touch a ticket in the same hemisphere for $65 each, and "good" seats near the stripe can run you $140 easily at certain tracks. I now only go if I get free passes or it's company-sponsored. I went to 1 race last year, and 1 race this year... I'm done 'til next year if at all.

The last thing I'll tell you is that there is more going on behind the scenes than we all know. It is more like the WWF than you guys think. Funny how Humpy Wheeler picked Jimmy Johnson to win at Charlotte (even after our Governor slapped his best car into the wall at 160 mph 4 days before the Winston), and damned if he didn't win... not only the Winston, but the Pole, and the Coca-Cola 600 too. When the governing body gets to make the rules "on the fly", strange things can happen. I could go on and on about tire swapping, fuel loading, and other issues that tend to give an unexplained advantage to certain teams at certain times, but we only get 10,000 characters per post!

Anyhow, I have stopped following NASCAR closely, because I too prefer the original STOCK cars of yore, and the passion that drove the men to drive the car - not MONEY. Today, I prefer ASA, Camel GT, and Trans Am racing. Headlights, brake lights, and right-hand turns provide much more to get excited about IMO.

I personally think a grass-roots rebirth of a NASCAR-like sanctioned series would TAKE-OFF here stateside. The car must come from a dealer, the original powerplant must be retained, and only factory-available power mods and safety mods can be used. Purse might be only $10k, and tickets $20 each for 3-4 good hours of door-scrubbing. I'd be there with bells on! Heck, I might would even consider building a car to run too.

 

I didn't know that, thats probably one of the better things about supercars is watching them in different weather. The Bathurst 1000 race the track is that big that part of the course will have rain and the other half will be dry..

 

ALMS/grand am cup have production based classes as well there is a mustang vs camaro challange in the states that looks cool.

 

This is exactly what my friends and I think needs to be done in NASCAR, especially after watching WRC and Superbike racing (yes, a diverse pair, but both showcase production-based vehicles). I could give a crap less about a Monte Carlo despite Junior's success, because I know the production version has nothing to do with what he drives. On the other hand, the success of the WRX in WRC and the Ducati 9xx in WSBK has me begging the wife to let me put one of each in our garage.

I recall reading something in Methanol Boy's column on autoextremist.com about a certain NASCAR team owner who runs Fords, and his complaint about the persistant use of outdated technology that has nothing to do with production engines. His point was pretty simple - without a connection to what's on the street, he can't get the factories to foot any of the bill for engine R&D. On the other hand, if they use what the OEMs are selling, then it's in everyone's best interest to advance the state of the art, and he could piggyback on all of the production-level R&D that's occuring while giving those engineers some real-world feedback. This makes a hell of a lot of sense, as some of the best-ever production engines stole technology directly from the track, and without a doubt the racing world could benefit from some of the modern modeling and simulation techniques on the design side, and the engine-management technology on the track.

Why the US can only support one racing league (NASCAR) is totally beyond me, when you look at the diverse racing culture in the rest of the world. We're supposedly in love with cars, and this is the best we can do? I'm not going to waste my time with criticism of NASCAR because 1) it's too easy and 2) I actually enjoy watching it; rather, I'm just ashamed of everyone out there who'd like to think that they're a motorsports fan but yet is blissfully unaware of all the other fine racing series that exist.

I think the bottom line is that when the cars in the parking lot are more sophisticated than the cars on the track and yet you still think that you're "big time", you may have a problem.