Just tuned in to the race and noticed the barely filled grandstands. NASCAR said they expected about 50,000 fans in attendance (capacity is just over 78,000) but it looks very sparce. This was a very expensive experiment (running full sized stockers on a go kart track). How is it doing on TV?
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FOX: NASCAR at the L.A. Coliseum
- Thread starter landtuna
- Start date
Well, the featured race doesn't start for another hour... so maybe hold off your judgements on crowd size for a little bit?
I think it's a weird choice for Nascar to move the Clash from Daytona to a football stadium in California. But it is probably also a worthwhile experiment, so long as they are willing to take a loss.
I think it's a weird choice for Nascar to move the Clash from Daytona to a football stadium in California. But it is probably also a worthwhile experiment, so long as they are willing to take a loss.
NASCAR is dead to me
Well, that was a very poorly timed and hokey start to the main event. Pandering to the local fans didn't go off so well. I passed on the pre-show halftime show. Since a repeat is coming up next week at the Stupid Bowl there is no need to watch it twice. (Actually, no need to watch it once.)
NASCAR is still trying hard to push Bubba Wallace. He finished dead last. So much for publicity.
The fiasco has begun. Looks like the transaxles (yes, they now have transaxles) are not up to the task - two lead cars are out. But following the leader sure is fun, huh?
Another halftime show? I guess it was needed to extend the minuscule 'feature' so fans wouldn't feel cheated. Poor old Cube looked like he was gonna have a heart attack. Too old and fat for this kind of thing (along with a ton of his fans). Thank goodness for the mute button. Anyone tell these bozos that the Raiders moved to Vegas some time ago?
This 'race' validates all those people who criticize NASCAR for boring left-hand circle jerks. Maybe NASCAR can put some folding chairs in the infield so pissed-off drivers can throw them like the wrestlers do.
If NASCAR does this again I think I'd vote for an old fashioned jalopy or figure 8 race in Bakersfield. Anyone know if Windy MacDonald is available to do the announcing? (Windy used to do Manzanita Raceway back in the day.)
P.S. They still didn't fill up the stands. Didn't even come close.
NASCAR is still trying hard to push Bubba Wallace. He finished dead last. So much for publicity.
The fiasco has begun. Looks like the transaxles (yes, they now have transaxles) are not up to the task - two lead cars are out. But following the leader sure is fun, huh?
Another halftime show? I guess it was needed to extend the minuscule 'feature' so fans wouldn't feel cheated. Poor old Cube looked like he was gonna have a heart attack. Too old and fat for this kind of thing (along with a ton of his fans). Thank goodness for the mute button. Anyone tell these bozos that the Raiders moved to Vegas some time ago?
This 'race' validates all those people who criticize NASCAR for boring left-hand circle jerks. Maybe NASCAR can put some folding chairs in the infield so pissed-off drivers can throw them like the wrestlers do.
If NASCAR does this again I think I'd vote for an old fashioned jalopy or figure 8 race in Bakersfield. Anyone know if Windy MacDonald is available to do the announcing? (Windy used to do Manzanita Raceway back in the day.)
P.S. They still didn't fill up the stands. Didn't even come close.
My wife is watching, that's all I know
If they wanted a full house, they should have done it at the LA County Fairgrounds. That is NASCAR country out there.
But then they couldn't have patronized all those "L.A. sports legends" (including little Jeffy's Olympic style torch lighting). P.T. Barnam rolled over in his grave.
NASCAR has never been popular in CA, the races at Fontana are poorly attended.
as I said above, I'm done with NOOSECAR
They screwed around with the cars to the point it might as well be IROC
Sponsors are running away, to the point they can't put together a 42 car field.... remember when there would be 50 teams trying to qualify... teams went home if they didn't qualify.... hey what happened to qualifying?
They have pinned their future on Rap acts and a driver who, if you look at his history, is a sub 20th place driver statistically, even when he is put into the best equipment.... 5 years into his career and he is a mid pack driver at best.... JFC he makes me miss Danica.
And if you don't think NASCAR is on the same level as professional wrestling, I assure you it is.
The France family ran NASCAR like the McMahons ran WWF/WWE
I have friends who raced at the Cup level back in the good old days when you didn't need 40 million in sponsorship money to get on the track. They won't even watch a race now.
as I said above, I'm done with NOOSECAR
They screwed around with the cars to the point it might as well be IROC
Sponsors are running away, to the point they can't put together a 42 car field.... remember when there would be 50 teams trying to qualify... teams went home if they didn't qualify.... hey what happened to qualifying?
They have pinned their future on Rap acts and a driver who, if you look at his history, is a sub 20th place driver statistically, even when he is put into the best equipment.... 5 years into his career and he is a mid pack driver at best.... JFC he makes me miss Danica.
And if you don't think NASCAR is on the same level as professional wrestling, I assure you it is.
The France family ran NASCAR like the McMahons ran WWF/WWE
I have friends who raced at the Cup level back in the good old days when you didn't need 40 million in sponsorship money to get on the track. They won't even watch a race now.
Can't disagree with anything you've said.
When I lived in the South back in the 70's their whole world would stop on Sundays for NASCAR races. Even out here in Phoenix it would be SRO on Rattlesnake Hill. Not no more (as they say in the South).
i agree with the griping on the Sport of NASCAR, or should i say Motorsports Entertainment, NASCAR devolved into the motorsports version of Pro Wrestling a long time ago, even Tony Stewart himself compare the sport to Wrestling in the past when he complained about the officiating of the sport.
IndyCar has slowly overtook NASCAR in the US Popularly and so did F1 in recent year (don't know if the 2021 F1 season finale and the championship battle will impact it cause of the officials basically helped Max Verstappen win the drivers championship).
NASCAR has been in decline for a while, it's peak with the mid 2000s, it had that fad sport popularity that capitalized in the nation's zeitgeist of the US's politics of the 2000s and the war in Iraq and the War on Terror helped painted NASCAR as a pro military especially with races cars sponsored by branches of the US Military. this is mirroring WWE and WCW's peak of the late 90s with WCW peaking in 1997 and WWE peaking in 2000, both companies took advantage of realism based angles (WCW did it first after stealing the concept of gimmicks based on realism instead of cartoony based gimmicks of Wrestling pre-ECW, as ECW was the promotion that kinda help change the wrestling world to a more adult friendly fake sport again) and the fact the late 90s was a rowdy period in US history and it will fueled by a presidential sex scandal.
Point is, some of the causals that followed NASCAR left when the recession happened and the sport became to gimmicky and started doing gimmicks and manufactured drama and also was becoming too expensive to attend, and the die hards are also slowly leaving the sport in disgust for a combo of the sports gimmicks to in more recent years, becoming "Woke" when confederate flags were banned and the the "Noosegate" scandal broke which kinda made racist NASCAR fans more angry at the sports lone African-American superstar (they even compare him to disgraced Empire actor Jussie Smollett (who was caught faking a hate crime) when it turned out the noose found at Talladega was not a hate crime and was there from the previous fall race at Talladega and made not out of hate, but out of making it easier to open the garage door as the rope with the noose was actually the rope that opens the garage door at the Cup Series garage at Talladega. even corporations are leaving NASCAR for a good while as major sponsors left cause NASCAR is too expensive to sponsor and at this point it's not even giving the companies the profits that it once did give them during the sports peak so they just giving up on NASCAR cause other sports with bigger popularity are more profitable then NASCAR to sponsor.
To sum it up why NASCAR is losing it's fans is Racism, Too Expensive, and too much Motorsports gimmicks and manufactured drama.
Now as for this race, this was a first time event, it was ran at the wrong time of day and wrong day of the week, the Clash should had been a Saturday Night race, not a late Sunday Afternoon race. the reason they chose the Coliseum in the first place cause NASCAR fans were fed up with the Advance Auto Parts/Busch Clash/Budweiser Shootout/Sprint Unlimited race that ran every year at Daytona and the last 3 races at Daytona was not great and fans hated it, with the 2019 race being a wreckfest, the 2020 race being a rain shorten wreckfest and 2021's race being not longer run on the oval but instead of the oval which was built solely for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. and then yesterday race was one by a polarizing figure in Joey Logano who is kinda a driver most fans hate, dating back in to 2015 where he wrecked Matt Kenseth out of the NASCAR playoffs and then Kenseth got his payback by wrecking Logano out of the playoffs and the crowd at Martinsville cheered when Kenseth wrecked him out.
IndyCar has slowly overtook NASCAR in the US Popularly and so did F1 in recent year (don't know if the 2021 F1 season finale and the championship battle will impact it cause of the officials basically helped Max Verstappen win the drivers championship).
NASCAR has been in decline for a while, it's peak with the mid 2000s, it had that fad sport popularity that capitalized in the nation's zeitgeist of the US's politics of the 2000s and the war in Iraq and the War on Terror helped painted NASCAR as a pro military especially with races cars sponsored by branches of the US Military. this is mirroring WWE and WCW's peak of the late 90s with WCW peaking in 1997 and WWE peaking in 2000, both companies took advantage of realism based angles (WCW did it first after stealing the concept of gimmicks based on realism instead of cartoony based gimmicks of Wrestling pre-ECW, as ECW was the promotion that kinda help change the wrestling world to a more adult friendly fake sport again) and the fact the late 90s was a rowdy period in US history and it will fueled by a presidential sex scandal.
Point is, some of the causals that followed NASCAR left when the recession happened and the sport became to gimmicky and started doing gimmicks and manufactured drama and also was becoming too expensive to attend, and the die hards are also slowly leaving the sport in disgust for a combo of the sports gimmicks to in more recent years, becoming "Woke" when confederate flags were banned and the the "Noosegate" scandal broke which kinda made racist NASCAR fans more angry at the sports lone African-American superstar (they even compare him to disgraced Empire actor Jussie Smollett (who was caught faking a hate crime) when it turned out the noose found at Talladega was not a hate crime and was there from the previous fall race at Talladega and made not out of hate, but out of making it easier to open the garage door as the rope with the noose was actually the rope that opens the garage door at the Cup Series garage at Talladega. even corporations are leaving NASCAR for a good while as major sponsors left cause NASCAR is too expensive to sponsor and at this point it's not even giving the companies the profits that it once did give them during the sports peak so they just giving up on NASCAR cause other sports with bigger popularity are more profitable then NASCAR to sponsor.
To sum it up why NASCAR is losing it's fans is Racism, Too Expensive, and too much Motorsports gimmicks and manufactured drama.
Now as for this race, this was a first time event, it was ran at the wrong time of day and wrong day of the week, the Clash should had been a Saturday Night race, not a late Sunday Afternoon race. the reason they chose the Coliseum in the first place cause NASCAR fans were fed up with the Advance Auto Parts/Busch Clash/Budweiser Shootout/Sprint Unlimited race that ran every year at Daytona and the last 3 races at Daytona was not great and fans hated it, with the 2019 race being a wreckfest, the 2020 race being a rain shorten wreckfest and 2021's race being not longer run on the oval but instead of the oval which was built solely for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona. and then yesterday race was one by a polarizing figure in Joey Logano who is kinda a driver most fans hate, dating back in to 2015 where he wrecked Matt Kenseth out of the NASCAR playoffs and then Kenseth got his payback by wrecking Logano out of the playoffs and the crowd at Martinsville cheered when Kenseth wrecked him out.
That was an interesting read!
I'll ask an innocent questions: how much is "the environment" changing attitudes about fast cars, drag racing and motor "sports" in general?
To clarify, the world is transitioning away from fossil fuels and kids are learning about the environment in school and taught "petroleum = bad" and "wind and solar = good".
Is the NASCAR fan base shrinking, or failing to gain passion among Millennials and anyone under 30? To me, the "Dukes of Hazard" represent a variety of things that are wrong with America, but I'm a lot more socially liberal than the group that always followed motor sports.
Anyway, I've always thought that a radio broadcast of a motor race to be about as fun as play-by-play of a domino match (which I have heard on WTIL-1300!
Crowds at Nascar events have been trending down for a long time, roughly 15 years. Just in the last couple years, Nascar has been trying some "new" things, including changing up several of its race tracks. They will race in the St. Louis area (Gateway Speedway) for the first time this year; they were in Milwaukee at Road America for the first time in 65 years in 2021. The LA Coliseum event yesterday was the first of its kind.
Nascar is also copying a page from the IndyCar playbook with the revised car for 2022, by having a single chassis vendor and mostly pre-fab bodies. This both reduces costs and should make the events more competitive. One of the reasons Nascar has struggled lately is lack of competitiveness. It's hard to be engrossed in a race when there's nobody challenging for position - like a chess match when a draw comes near.
Nascar is expected to make its race cars hybrid electric in 3-5 years.
Nascar is also copying a page from the IndyCar playbook with the revised car for 2022, by having a single chassis vendor and mostly pre-fab bodies. This both reduces costs and should make the events more competitive. One of the reasons Nascar has struggled lately is lack of competitiveness. It's hard to be engrossed in a race when there's nobody challenging for position - like a chess match when a draw comes near.
Nascar is expected to make its race cars hybrid electric in 3-5 years.
hybrid electrics Oh that should be fun!
Ever see a EV battery or Hybrid car burn?
You can't put the fire out, as each cell lights off you have a new fire.
There is a reason wrecked EV/Hybrids are not left on tow trucks over night and are stored away from other cars and never inside... they will spontaneously for days after an accident.
I'd rather spend a Sunday afternoon at Hudson Speedway watching the locals race.
Our race team still has 3 cars from our Bush North days in storage, and we have engines for them too.... Maybe we can get out on the track this summer..... I know our driver who is 78 can still drive like the madman he was back in 2006 when we last raced
Ever see a EV battery or Hybrid car burn?
You can't put the fire out, as each cell lights off you have a new fire.
There is a reason wrecked EV/Hybrids are not left on tow trucks over night and are stored away from other cars and never inside... they will spontaneously for days after an accident.
I'd rather spend a Sunday afternoon at Hudson Speedway watching the locals race.
Our race team still has 3 cars from our Bush North days in storage, and we have engines for them too.... Maybe we can get out on the track this summer..... I know our driver who is 78 can still drive like the madman he was back in 2006 when we last raced
I'll give it a shot (being a very old motorsports fan of several genre's:
Motorsports in general is being negatively affected by the switch out of petroleum vehicles but it is still a major pastime for many (probably aging out though as newer "car guys" are not being minted like the old days).
Drag racing used to be the ultimate motorsport. "Run what you brung" was the order of the day and there were classes for everyone. Now it is almost a pure exhibition sport and the costs/technology are so far out of sight it is no longer a participation sport for the "little guy". The recent change from 1/4 mile tracks to 1/8 mile just killed it. Instead of making the tracks safer (speed and runoff areas) they shortened the tracks which kept car costs as high as before but lost a lot of interest.
Sports cars and F1 are so foreign to most American fans (who also apparently don't like road courses either) they are almost an afterthought. The whining and bitching by the F1 teams and drivers has ruined that series not to mention the constant rules changes and politics. The only people caring about sports cars are the teams themselves or the manufacturers. Trans-Am racing used to be great but the decline of the American muscle car killed those.
Boat and airplane racing have always been niche events. Likewise off-shore hydros. Only good for "wipe out" video makers.
Motocross in the USA seems to be as popular as always but other forms of bike racing have just about died (hill climb, flat track, TT scrambles etc.). And once again it is a young man's sport almost exclusively. Stadium racing still seems to fill the seats but fans age out very quickly.
Kart racing is still going strong and is an ideal dad/kid club sport. No professional link though.
Desert racing (Mint 400, Dakar etc.) are interesting to watch on the telly but are not near the general population. Most local dirt tracks, and the deserts, have been restricted for many years now which leaves places like Glamis the only suitable area for the average racer to have fun in the sand.
Most young people today can't drive a stick or anything without a full nav system and a trunk full of loud speakers. And the cost of fuel does a lot to ruin the "car guy" mentality as well. Emissions equipment and fuel efficiency requirements have made most cars too expensive and difficult to work on. The world is now wonking on lifted trucks.
Try listening to a Brit or Aussie call a F1 or V8 sedan race. It's worse than being inside the car. Where are you now Jackie Stewart or David Hobbs?
Motorsports in general is being negatively affected by the switch out of petroleum vehicles but it is still a major pastime for many (probably aging out though as newer "car guys" are not being minted like the old days).
Drag racing used to be the ultimate motorsport. "Run what you brung" was the order of the day and there were classes for everyone. Now it is almost a pure exhibition sport and the costs/technology are so far out of sight it is no longer a participation sport for the "little guy". The recent change from 1/4 mile tracks to 1/8 mile just killed it. Instead of making the tracks safer (speed and runoff areas) they shortened the tracks which kept car costs as high as before but lost a lot of interest.
Sports cars and F1 are so foreign to most American fans (who also apparently don't like road courses either) they are almost an afterthought. The whining and bitching by the F1 teams and drivers has ruined that series not to mention the constant rules changes and politics. The only people caring about sports cars are the teams themselves or the manufacturers. Trans-Am racing used to be great but the decline of the American muscle car killed those.
Boat and airplane racing have always been niche events. Likewise off-shore hydros. Only good for "wipe out" video makers.
Motocross in the USA seems to be as popular as always but other forms of bike racing have just about died (hill climb, flat track, TT scrambles etc.). And once again it is a young man's sport almost exclusively. Stadium racing still seems to fill the seats but fans age out very quickly.
Kart racing is still going strong and is an ideal dad/kid club sport. No professional link though.
Desert racing (Mint 400, Dakar etc.) are interesting to watch on the telly but are not near the general population. Most local dirt tracks, and the deserts, have been restricted for many years now which leaves places like Glamis the only suitable area for the average racer to have fun in the sand.
Most young people today can't drive a stick or anything without a full nav system and a trunk full of loud speakers. And the cost of fuel does a lot to ruin the "car guy" mentality as well. Emissions equipment and fuel efficiency requirements have made most cars too expensive and difficult to work on. The world is now wonking on lifted trucks.
Try listening to a Brit or Aussie call a F1 or V8 sedan race. It's worse than being inside the car. Where are you now Jackie Stewart or David Hobbs?
Sounds a lot like the compressed air dragsters from a while ago. Never seen one? No wonder!
If you're talking about NASCAR races in high profile football stadia, I guess it's fhe first since NASCAR became NASCAR.
Believe it or Not, Soldier Field in Chicago Once Hosted a NASCAR Cup Race
Before the Chicago Bears called Soldier Field home, racing ruled Soldier Field.
...and the TV ratings are in
NASCAR’s “Clash” hits high in L.A. debut, return to FOX.
NASCAR’s “Clash” hits high in L.A. debut, return to FOX.
Were races scripted and results predetermined?
the results were manipulated yes
On a Sunday with virtually no competition - NFL Pro Bowl which is not a big watched event and Olympic figure skating which does not compete with NASCAR.
On a major TV network - Fox instead of Fox Sports.
Not a typical NASCAR crowd - you could tell by how late the fans arrived for the main event and the very non-traditional 'entertainment'.
Anyone care to guess how much FOX lost on this fiasco? Fox's spin doctors sure not letting it out.
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