The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series started off a few years
\nago with a lot of fanfare and promise. The first couple of years, it was a
\npretty exciting series to watch.<\/p>\n
But then NASCAR started messing with a good thing. They
\ndid away with the half time stops so that teams had to perform pit stops during
\nthe race. The natural result of that was that the better funded teams (e.g.,
\nHendrick, Roush, Earnhardt, Childress) pretty much stunk up the show.<\/p>\n
So, in an effort to get more people to pay attention to
\nthe series, NASCAR decided to run more truck races in conjunction with Winston
\nCup races.<\/p>\n
The first one took place Friday, and by all accounts was a
\ngreat race. Bobby Hamilton, when asked to describe how disappointed he was by
\nbeing knocked out early said that he wasn’t really disappointed because he
\nwanted to get up on the hauler and watch it because it was such a good race.<\/p>\n
Racing at Daytona not seen since the restrictor plates
\ncame on the scene. Passing, slingshotting, all the classic moves from the old
\ndays at Daytona. NASCAR’s plan seemed to be working great.<\/p>\n
Well, at least until the crash.<\/p>\n
Then NASCAR’s plan backfired. The kind of publicity that
\nNASCAR got after the race was certainly not the kind they were aiming for. News
\nand sports media that don’t usually even acknowledge the existence of NASCAR ran
\nthe video or featured a story about the crash. I’ve even seen the story on
\npolitically oriented web sites.<\/p>\n
ESPN, to their credit, declined to show any replays of the
\nwreck until they were certain that none of the injuries were life threatening.
\nBut I understand that that didn’t stop CNN from showing it on their headline
\nnews, while the race was still red flagged.<\/p>\n
The die hard race fan knows that the story here is not
\nthat there was a serious wreck that injured a driver and several fans. The real
\nstory is that the safety precautions mandated by NASCAR worked perfectly in the
\ntruck race (and in today’s Busch Grand National race as well). But the
\nconventional news media, in their thirst for blood, only sees the serious crash
\nthat happened. In their eyes, the only thing that would make the footage even
\nbetter would have been a fatality.<\/p>\n
The upshot is that NASCAR is getting publicity for the
\nSeries, but not the kind they wanted. I’ve seen quotes saying that racing has a
\n"black eye" because of the wreck.<\/p>\n
True NASCAR fans know that there are risks involved in our
\nfavorite sport. While the drivers take most of the risks, the crew and to quite
\na bit lesser extent, the fans in the stands are at risk. It’s part of the sport.
\nI may be showing some naivete here, but I truly believe that most fans watch and
\nattend races for the racing action. But as long as the conventional news and
\nsports media treats us as if we watch races for the wrecks, then NASCAR racing
\nwon’t move to the mainstream. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series started off a few years ago with a lot of fanfare and promise. The first couple of years, it was a pretty exciting series to watch. But then NASCAR started messing with a good thing. They did away with the half time stops so that teams had to perform pit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racindeals.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}