Dirty Air: Caution Flag

During NASCAR’s bye week, some drivers took some much-needed quiet time away on vacation and spent time with their wives and families. One other decided to use his free time to continue doing what he has developed a reputation for doing best — being a source of controversy.

If you haven’t yet made a guess as to whom I am referring, it is Carson “Hurricane” Hocevar. His relationship-straining antics on the track, often compared to Dale Earnhardt, have endeared him to some as the Dale-Like anti-hero the sport has needed since February of 2001. For most of his fellow competitors and detractors, it has drawn hate. Speaking as one who covers the sport as well as a near-lifelong fan of stock car racing, Hocevar IS a refreshing thing. While NASCAR has had its villains over the last 25 years — Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, etc, it has not had a polarizing figure that is both loved and despised simultaneously by fans and drivers alike.

But his most recent conversation starter is one that I feel is just as polarizing as his antics and personality. Why? Because no matter where you stand in the fan base — a longtime fan, a DARF (don’t know what that means? Just google it..), a newcomer, or just a casual; even better — no matter your opinion of Carson, you might actually find yourself in total agreement with at least a part of the discussion.

Two weeks ago, Hocevar decided to take to Facebook with an intriguing take. He was watching a recording of the television broadcast of the 2000 Talladega fall race — the one in which Dale Earnhardt came from the back to score his final career victory. You might remember that era, particularly in superspeedway racing — the X pipe exhaust system under the cars that made them so loud your ears would ring for hours afterward even if you were wearing earplugs, the raw speed and horsepower (even with the restrictor plates), looser rules that allowed for teams to stretch the limits of what they could do with the car to get that extra half a second’s advantage over the others, the ability to change lanes and make passes without your drafting partner’s fender shoved into the fuel cell while they push you, a pack that is able to separate from one another instead of just riding side by side, grandstands packed with 100,000+ people. It was truly a part of NASCAR’s golden age.

Carson’s point was that there was something beautiful about watching that old race. Now, don’t get me wrong — old races like that are amazing to go back and watch and they seemingly never get old no matter how many times you’ve seen them. NASCAR fans are some of the most nostalgic people ever. We love throwback paint schemes. We love going to old tracks like North Wilkesboro, Darlington, Bowman Gray Stadium, and Daytona. We love old diecasts. We love wearing throwback apparel. Even younger fans that were not alive in those eras love to rock the 80’s trucker caps, the Jeff Gordon rainbow warrior gear, or the all black Intimidator shirts.

It is just part of the culture of NASCAR. Many fans don’t just come into the sport randomly. They are born into it. For some, their parents take them to a race and they fall in love with the sport. For others, they watch on TV with their mom or dad and are passed down the legends of days long gone by where Pearson, Yarborough, Earnhardt, Petty, Allison, Gant, Gordon, Labonte, Elliott, Martin, etc were the giants of the sport.

These fans, like Hocevar, have been invested in stock car racing their whole lives and have every right to appreciate and enjoy the rich history of the sport. To a degree, this is what I feel Carson’s facebook post was about — bringing light to a better time. We all long for the good ole days, and let’s be honest, it is more than just in NASCAR. There is a reason we millennials watch the same reruns of ‘Friends’ and ‘The Office’ over and over. We find comfort in reliving what we perceive as a simpler/better time in our lives.

Hocevar, in all the nostalgia he clearly felt, proceeded to say that the presentation, entertainment value, and visual appeal of the race was so much better than it is in the present-day. He is also not wrong there. The current broadcast quality in NASCAR differs drastically depending on which stretch of the season we are in. Fox is by far the worst. Back in the day, they went all-out for NASCAR. The infamous “digger cam” they’d place on the track where you could get a surface-level view of the cars zooming by. The multiple in-car camera views ranging from the roof and rear deck lid to the rotating camera that would be suspended on the passenger side. Passionate commentary from Darrell Waltrip, Mike Joy, and Larry McReynolds. There was the ‘crank it up’ part of the broadcast. And last but not least, the ever-informative cutaway car that would teach so much about the parts and functions and aero on the cars.

Now, watching a race on Fox feels like seeing a bunch of people in a studio try to call a race based on a stream rather than being at the track in person (that was actually the case for the truck series last year). There’s cheesy cartoon graphics of the drivers and a live leaderboard that takes up a lot of the screen while all the other cool things we had in the presentation 20 years ago are long gone. Sure, there are more in-car cameras than ever. But, having Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick in the booth is a complete mismatch of personalities that is like listening to nails on a chalkboard at times. One thing has become very evident — Fox no longer cares about NASCAR.

The only decent broadcasts we get are the five glorious weeks when Amazon Prime carries the five races leading to the In-Season tournament. TNT, while using the same booth as Prime, is just okay and NBC/USA do a great job despite the noisy opinions of a few about Leigh Diffey. Case/point — the TV product doesn’t help NASCAR at all. But, if Carson’s point was to bemoan the TV quality — he could have stopped there.

Instead, and this is where I feel he went off track in his argument, he also belittled the knowledge level of some race fans. Hocevar said that the casual fan just wants to be entertained, not caring about aerodynamics, downforce, drag, tire wear, or race strategy. While it is true that there are ‘casual fans’ like that — those folks that just watch for wrecks, not caring about who wins or what else is going on. You could add a second level of casuality — fans that only watch the big races like the Daytona 500, Coke 600, Southern 500, Brickyard 400, and maybe Bristol or the championship race. But, even those casuals have some base-level knowledge of racing.

Truthfully, nobody who is watching races on TV and actually watching the race lacks any care for the technical or strategic side of things. All of that makes the racing more interesting and gives insight into what is going. So to insinuate that the true casuals don’t care or that those things should not be talked about on broadcasts is a bit ridiculous.

Hocevar finished his spiel by claiming that NASCAR is asleep at the wheel and ignoring the true problems while once again taking the argument back towards the broadcast quality. But, here is the thing he is missing in all of this. The quality of broadcast has nothing to do with NASCAR at all. The sanctioning body has no input on what the networks do. It is pretty much as simple as “network gives lots of moolah to put them on TV, NASCAR gladly takes the moolah they need.”

That puts NASCAR, and subsequently the races, at the mercy of the networks for everything from start times, when pit road can be open, and even how long the caution periods have to run so the networks can get their commercial breaks in. That is also a huge problem. Everything is so advertising-driven that you miss big moments like crashes, passes for the lead, entire restarts, and even half of the closing laps of the race. It was not half as bad back in 2000 — even without the side by side/split screen commercials we see now so as to minimize the action missed under the green flag.

Hocevar also fails to realize that as much as we would love to see it, the golden era of NASCAR we are all so nostalgic for is never going to happen again. That is not to say that the sport is dead or dying. As a matter of fact, in-person attendance at races these days is on the upswing. Carson hates the idea of continually telling people that races are better in person. But, that is just the honest truth. Even in that golden era, people weren’t becoming fans of the sport because they watched a race on TV. Like I said earlier, NASCAR fandom is often passed down or developed by going to the track and experiencing it yourself. No level of broadcast quality can change that.

Yes, NASCAR does have its flaws and problems that they are sluggish to do anything about, but the TV product is not one they can really change. In fact, I would argue that the problem is not just that certain networks’ quality is better or worse than others. Rather, the problem is NASCAR’s current media rights deal.

They are drawing in 7 billion dollars off of the contract that delegates the races be split between Fox, Prime, TNT, and NBC/USA — and that is just for the cup series. The Craftsman Truck Series can exclusively be seen on FS1 and the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series can be seen on the CW or streamed on ESPN every week. There is a serious problem when your two lower classes are more easily accessible and centralized than your premier series.

This is like MLB when every team had a regional network. Blackouts and inability to watch the games they cared about ticked people off to the point MLB decided to centralize into one platform with MLB.tv. NASCAR needs to do the same. Because if people have to buy a subscription to YouTube TV, Prime, and ESPN Plus and then search google to know where to find the race on TV each week — especially with this economy, fans are not going to want to tune in.

So, to sum it all up, Carson Hocevar is right. The TV product stinks and things were awesome 26 years ago. But, he missed the mark on his assessment of the true problem.