Let’s
do away with all your high-horsed jokes before we continue. Yes, NASCAR’s roots
are in the Deep South, where terms like “y’all” and “you’ve got a pretty mouth”
are common vernacular.
Yes,
NASCAR apparel is the most ungodly thing ever created, full of wraparound-print
T-shirts and hats that are louder than a hot Prohibition-era swing band. Yes,
there really is a driver named Dick Trickle. And yes, yes — exasperated sigh
— they all drive around in circles.
“You can pooh-pooh any sport by
describing it at its basic, boring level,” says Mike Pazdyk, longtime voice of
WDKX 104 FM’s morning show. Pazdyk also moonlights as an announcer at a good
chunk of NASCAR’s most prestigious tracks.
“What
is football? It’s 11 guys going back and forth down the football field. What’s
baseball? It’s 11 guys standing in a field waiting for a ball to be hit. What’s
basketball? Two five-man teams going back and forth, back and forth, back and
forth down the court till the time’s over.”
Pazdyk — Paz to those that know him
— is one of the biggest fans of a sport that is slowly but surely taking over
America. Don’t believe it? “NASCAR dads” — white, working-class fathers —
are the political target demographic du
jour. George W. proved it when he popped up at this year’s Daytona 500 to
give the traditional “start your engines” call.
That
was Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in all those Super Bowl ads; Jeff Gordon hosted Saturday Night Live last year having
already appeared on the The Drew Carey
Show before that. And you’ll be hard-pressed to drive around this city and
not see someone sporting a “3” (for the late Dale Earnhardt, Sr.) on their
bumper.
Here’s a quick history (which some have traced
back as far as the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion). Back in the days of prohibition,
bootleggers would modify their cars to smuggle alcohol all over the South. And
they started racing each other for bragging rights.
Pretty
soon, NASCAR founder William H.G. France had the good ol’ boys racing on
Daytona Beach in Florida. Brave souls would wait by the sides of the makeshift
track to throw buckets of water onto the passing racers’ windshields to wash
off the mud.
Now,
over fifty years later, NASCAR professes 72 million fans. And for those of you
who would think it the plebian sport, 42percent of those fans make $50,
000 a year or more.
With
a growing fan base, the sport has become a doctoral thesis in marketing:
drivers festooned in corporate logos drive cars bedecked in corporate logos
around racetracks bejeweled with corporate logos, brought to you by corporate
logos, and broadcast on the corporate-logo box.
And
the product placement has fueled the sport’s growth. With people buying more of
the stuff they see plastered all over such things as the “brake cam,” smart
companies are trying to get their names on anything and everything within sight
of NASCAR tracks. NASCAR gets to use the money to spread its wings.
NASCAR
reports that its fans’ brand loyalty is at a whopping 72 percent (the next
closest is golf, with 52 percent). PBS.com describes Kodak’s 1993 poll of
NASCAR fans: 95 percent of them chose Kodak — a longtime car sponsor — over
other brands.
And
why are so many people running around
wearing those unsightly T-shirts? If you found out that people were spending
$400 million in 1994 on NASCAR apparel, you’d probably try to pump out a few,
too. Just don’t forget to put that American flag and eagle behind your car of
choice.
But
this corporate brainwashing is ancillary to the sport, which is, of course, the
time-honored tradition of racing things with wheels. Dangerous? Yes. Fast?
Undeniably so.
“It’s
exciting to watch this stuff,” Paz says. “Especially if [people] see it in
person. You’ve got 43 guys going after it really fast, which is something to
see.”
People
frowning upon the demure practice of driving around in circles need only see
Wally Dallenbach drive celebrities around tracks before NBC’s race broadcasts
to appreciate what’s involved. David Spade let out a genuine wail when
Dallenbach skimmed a wall, and Ben Affleck looked like he just about J.Lo-ed
his pants while speeding around Daytona.
There’s
nothing fans love more than seeing two drivers getting loose late in a run and
trading paint at 180 miles per hour.
NASCAR, The National Association
for Stock Car Auto Racing, actually presides over a myriad of racing circuits:
everything from trucks to the Triple-A-League feel of the Busch Series. But the
Nextel Cup Series — what was once the Winston Cup Series — is the one
you’ll see on the nightly news. It’s NASCAR’S crown jewel.
The
2004 season has already begun and it is poised to be a significant year in
NASCAR’S history. The face of the sport is — literally and figuratively —
changing. Some fear that it is distancing itself from its roots, as well.
Beginning with Jeff Gordon 10 years
ago, the sport has been besieged by young, good-looking (read: marketable)
racers who have upped the bar. These “young guns” have been winning races with
a fervor that has drawn considerable attention away from such legendary
old-school drivers like Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte.
And
the worst part of it: A bunch of them aren’t even from the South. Gordon —
already fourth on the all-time victories list — is from Indiana, and barely
past 30. And Ryan Newman — the biggest winner of last year — has an
engineering degree, a far cry from running moonshine.
The sport has definitely flourished
with younger drivers whose backgrounds are not relegated to the Deep South.
Gordon’s meteoric rise to fame — and marketability — was unheard of in the
history of the sport, and opened up a whole new demographic.
“[Gordon]
was the first young star to be signed to a big contract,” Paz says. “He became
the magnet for the younger people to start being attracted to NASCAR.”
Nowadays, 21 percent of NASCAR’s fan base is between the ages of 25 and 34,
with that figure expected to rise with further mainstream crossover success.
The 2004 season offers more immediate
changes for fans to contend with: NASCAR has a new chairman (though Brian
France is the third France to serve as chair), there’s a new points system
which will hopefully make the end of the season a little more exciting, and
NASCAR’s premier sponsor has changed from tobacco giant Winston to cell-phone
mogul Nextel. The deal signed by Nextel is rumored to be somewhere around $700
million, and it makes the sport more appealing to an increasingly anti-smoking
nation.
“It’s
the start of the next level,” Paz says.
Change
in NASCAR is always met with much jeering from diehard fans. But at this
month’s Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. — the young gun considered by many
to be the future of NASCAR and the son of its greatest driver — won the
prestigious race for the first time. He took the checkered flag six years to
the day after his dad won and maybe offered a best-case scenario for the
future.
n
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2004.
