TC had an interesting conversation on our twitter account this week about pit road speeding penalties and just how much transparency NASCAR needs to provide. He said:
Absolutely no reason #NASCAR needs to make pit road speeds public. The teams are informed where they were speeding and by how much.
Needless to say he stood alone in his opinion among those who responded. His overarching point to that tweet and the many that followed was that the people who need to know the information have access to it. And therein lies the problem with most fans and the sport’s media.
There’s a ton of transparency in NASCAR, in many cases more so than in other sports, but only for those who need the information – i.e. the drivers, the crew chiefs, the team owners, etc. If you have a stake in the sport, NASCAR’s pretty crystal clear. Even the media is allowed a ton of access to information.
Consider, NASCAR never issues secret fines like the PGA (with Denny Hamlin last season, just because they didn’t put out a press release, doesn’t mean it was secret); inspections are done out in the open in the garage every weekend; if there’s an inspection done at the R&D Center, crew chiefs are free to come watch; a rulebook is provided to every license holder; and if teams/drivers want to know what their speeds were on pit road, NASCAR is more than happy to provide them.
With a serious distrust for the sanctioning body though, I suspect knowing that a bunch of other people have access isn’t enough for most fans. And I completely understand the want to know more and the desire to keep the sanctioning body honest.
From NASCAR’s perspective though, there has to be a threshold for withholding information. And though it would certainly be wonderful, it’s just not feasible for them to have complete transparency. At some point they would have cameras everywhere, telemetry for everything, but none of us would have the expertise to know what we were seeing. The truth is, some information is going to be proprietary, and even though you see drivers complaining about this, something tells me their bosses feel differently.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about openness and transparency, but I’m a realist when it comes to this stuff. NASCAR is not a publicly traded company, and they’re not a federal/state/local government – they’re a privately owned sanctioning body. And that means they’re under no obligation to do even the things they do.
Lucky for us, there are some checks in place. They do have a rulebook that they abide by (that everyone in the sport has), they allow teams and drivers a chance to check their work, and if those teams/drivers don’t like a ruling they can appeal it to a semi-independent appeals body (find that in another sport).
NASCAR is far from perfect, and they have a long way to go in improving relations with fans. And maybe in the not too distant future they will provide access to more information. In the meantime though, there is transparency, it just depends what side of the fence you’re on.
Happy Birthday to Us!
Well, we forgot last year’s birthday so we vowed not to do it again. And kudos to us, we remembered. Today is our third birthday. In celebration, we want to thank you for your participation and support. The fact is none of this would be possible without you! May we have another successful year!
TheNASCARInsiders.com
Follow the Insiders on Twitter or be a fan on Facebook!
