We had a question this week in our Ask The Insiders post about what the new six man pit stops will look like and I wanted to take this opportunity to expand a little further on my answer.
Last weekend at California NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston confirmed to Scene Daily that both the Cup and Nationwide Series would eliminate the catch can man position for the 2011 season. This confirms what we initially told you back in April. We knew for certain a few weeks ago that NASCAR would be getting rid of the catch can for the Nationwide Series, but NASCAR was back and forth about the Cup Series. We know now that it’s gone completely.
The elimination of the catch can means that all teams will now go to the new self-venting fuel cans like the Truck Series has been using all season. (See it in action here.)
I’m still not entirely clear if this move means we are only allowed six guys over the wall, because I’ve heard some talk that NASCAR may still allow seven. Either way though, pit stops will change, but not drastically. There will still be two tire changers, two tire carriers, and a jackman. And the actual tire changing part of the pit stop won’t change.
What eliminating the catch can position does do is change how many of the adjustments get made. With a seven man crew, the catch can guy makes most of the wedge and track bar adjustments with extended length wrenches. Now, the tire carriers will be tasked with making those adjustments. This will no doubt slow stops down when significant adjustments are needed.
Stops will also slow down, at least at first, because the fueling will take longer with only one crew guy handling the duties. We’ve seen in the Truck Series this season that stop times often get extended when a full fuel load is used. It takes a while to dump both cans, and the gas men must take the old can back to the wall before getting the second. In the past that first can would stay plugged in, thanks to the catch can guy, while the gas man went back for the second can.
It’s interesting to note though that the last two major changes to pit stops (longer studs in the Cup Series and different tire rolling rules) did slow stop times down initially, but after some time to perfect the technique, the times did come back down. I don’t expect this change to be any different.
I also wanted to say that while I’ve heard what NASCAR’s reasoning is for making this change, I don’t necessarily agree. The money that teams could possibly save by having one less guy over the wall is really a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. The few thousand dollars a year won’t make or break any team, and instead of charging $30,000 less for a sponsorship, teams will just spend that money elsewhere. NASCAR is right in trying to help the teams with budget problems, but this isn’t the way to do it.
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NASCAR has perception problems – with fans, with the media (especially its own), and with the mainstream. It’s something I’ve written about twice (here and here). After spending what I’m sure was a lot of money on consultants, I think NASCAR finally believes it too – and they’re doing something about it.
This week they announced the reorganization of their communications department. According to Sports Business Journal:
Members of the communications team will be embedded in other departments, such as consumer, brand and corporate marketing, in an effort to broaden and help NASCAR’s communications efforts evolve both inside the sanctioning body and with the sport’s teams, tracks and sponsors.
What this means is NASCAR is going to be adding more PR people, what SBJ said could be 20 to the existing department of about 25, and hiring a chief communications officer. Among other things, this will, in theory, allow them to do a better job of shifting and crafting a more positive narrative for the sport. And lets be honest, the narrative has gotten away from them.
Right or wrong, we’re entrenched in a media environment that focuses heavily on the negative. I personally believe this has been the main contributing factor to the malaise among NASCAR fans – as Ed Hinton put it, NASCARmyalgia.
With the amount of negative coverage (and seemingly no coherent communications strategy from NASCAR), fans are just feeling down on the sport. There really isn’t one explanation either. I refer you back to the Ed Hinton article. Pretty much all of the comments on the NASCAR PR story on SceneDaily.com went a little like this: “The product stinks. We don’t need NASCAR to spin things for us.” It sounds good to say, but I’m not sure what there is to improve about the product (no one really articulated that). Maybe make the car look better? Shorten races?
I’m really at a loss for what’s so bad right now. I think a lot of people are. I certainly see issues, but I understand there have and always will be things wrong with NASCAR (just like every other sport). Nothing’s perfect. What I think we can improve on is how we talk about the sport.
For all NASCAR hopes to accomplish with this reorganization I think changing that conversation has got to be one of the top priorities. NASCAR is presenting a good product week in and week out, but if people aren’t seeing it, or interested in it, it really doesn’t matter.
We’ll see in the coming seasons whether this actually makes a difference, but it’s interesting to see how NASCAR is trying to improve things.
Oh, and if you need a job it sounds like NASCAR will soon be hiring…
I really didn’t want to have to write this post. I figured that everyone was smart enough to really see things clearly and think logically, but I’ve been proven horribly wrong. After Jenna Fryer’s AP story about NASCAR “secretly” fining drivers that appeared this week, there has been a ton of discussion about the topic. I can respect people’s opinions on both sides of an argument, as everyone is entitled to what they think, but in this case some out there have completely lost it.
Before I even say what I want to say, I’m going to do you a favor. What I’m about to write will probably make some of you angry, and I’m cool with that. So before you call me a “NASCAR homer” in the comment section, stop. I’m going to side with NASCAR on this one, and I already know where this is leading. So save your energy.
Now, as everyone seems to know, NASCAR is currently in a tough spot. Attendance has been falling at tracks across the board and TV ratings continue to slump. NASCAR has made a ton of changes to try and fix what they believe the problems to be, and more changes are coming. NASCAR hopes these changes will bring people back to the track and get more people watching on TV, which in turn will hopefully bring sponsors back to racing that left, and also attract some new ones.
As NASCAR attempts to get back what they lost, what they really don’t need is a ton of bad press. And what do drivers do that continually bad mouth the sanctioning body and its decisions to the public? Create bad press.
ESPN has reported that they know who the drivers are that were fined by NASCAR, but to me, it doesn’t matter. What all of the drivers need to realize is that the media and the fans listen to what they have to say. If people didn’t care what they had to say, nobody would interview them. And don’t even try to tell me that fans don’t need to listen to the drivers to see how bad things are with NASCAR. If Dale Jr. can convince JR Nation to go out and buy Amp to the point that Amp’s sales go up 70% in the first year of the sponsorship, and Amp’s market share jumps from sixth in the category to fourth, this guy and all the other drivers can affect fans’ opinions.
Right now, it seems that fan frustration is pretty high. We read comments and emails from folks all the time about how they are close to quitting all together, and more from people that have given up. By criticizing NASCAR to the media, the drivers are just adding to the fan frustration and helping drive more of them away. And when fans leave, so do sponsorship dollars. So really, these drivers are really just hurting themselves, because with less sponsorship, there will be less rides for them to occupy, and less money available to pay them big salaries.
With all of this said, NASCAR must do all they can right now to protect their brand. They cannot afford to lose any more of the race fans. NASCAR wants the fans to be happy, because happy fans buy race tickets and merchandise, and watch on TV. So when a driver becomes overly critical of the sport, action must be taken. In this case, NASCAR decided fines were necessary to show not only the offending drivers, but everyone else that this would not be tolerated. What’s interesting to note here, is that according to spokesman Ramsey Poston, NASCAR warned all the drivers about the possibility of fines months ago.
For those of you who claim these fines violate free speech, try again. NASCAR did not fine these drivers because they had an opinion. They fined them because they chose the wrong forum in which to express that opinion. If the competitors really have a problem with the way things are being run, they need to take those opinions directly to Mike Helton, John Darby, Joe Balash, and Wayne Auton. Complaining to the media and fans won’t get them anywhere.
Moving on to this idea of “secret” fines, at what point did anyone say these fines were secret? There is a big difference between “secret” and not making something public knowledge. The original AP story has quotes from Poston in which he acknowledges that action was taken. He didn’t deny it, nor were these drivers told to keep the fines a secret. NASCAR is allowed to deal with problems internally, and not everything warrants a press release. The last time you were written up at work for being late 47 days in a row, something tells me your HR manager didn’t send out a press release to the local paper.
I also want to point out here that if NASCAR wanted something to be secret, it would remain secret. The community is extremely small, and if you think there aren’t things you don’t know about, then you are sadly confused.
With all of this being said, I’m not the enemy here. I agree with you that the drivers need to have their own personalities, and be able to speak their minds. Showing emotion is what makes us love and hate these guys. But drivers can show emotion without bashing NASCAR every five minutes in their post race press conferences. There is already way too much negativity in the press, the drivers don’t need to help.
I’m siding with NASCAR on this one because they were right to do what they did. Myself and thousands of other people depend on this sport and the jobs provided by it to pay our bills and feed our families. Fans not showing up and sponsors pulling out affects me and a lot of other people I know personally. I’m lucky to still have a spot in racing, but I know a ton of guys who don’t.
So the next time a driver wants to bitch and moan in an interview about what they perceive to be phony debris cautions, maybe they should think a little more about the ramifications of their words. It just might turn out that they unknowingly killed their own career.
Following Talladega and comments by NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston on his blog, there has been a lot of discussion of the coverage of NASCAR races; more importantly how that coverage is shaping the audience’s perception of what they’re seeing.
All I can say is, it’s about time. Earlier this year I took up the topic of NASCAR and perception. No matter your feelings on the state of the sport, it’s undeniable that the color of coverage shapes what people feel.
Dustin Long interviewed Brian France on the issue of TV coverage. He touched on this issue. He said:
“We fully expect a lot of criticism for any number of reasons, judgment calls that are made, officiating calls that are made and some strategy or policy decisions that are made. We’ve always had that. That’s OK. What I’m saying is in opinions that are under the guise of criticism or being critical that just go on and on and on without much thought that’s different from some policy or rule violation that we didn’t handle correctly, somebody is more than fair to criticize us. It’s just there’s an unprecedented level that occurs when you espouse your opinion about how to do one thing or another.”
If you’re truly being honest with yourself, unless you’re out gathering news, where you get your news or in this case your racing coverage, is going to shape how you feel about it. For instance if you watch the local TV station that is big into covering local crime, chances are you’re going to believe crime is higher in your city. Likewise watching Fox News over MSNBC is likely going to shape how you see issues.
How many times in the last two seasons have you heard about ratings declines, or sagging attendance? The fact is attendance is down in the NFL and ratings are down 6% for MLB on ESPN (we’re no worse off than any other sporting event). If you hear something enough (like this race is boring) though you’ll start to believe it, it’s human nature. The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
I personally found the coverage a little much. I doubt the brass at ESPN was thrilled with it. They’re only driving away the audience for programming ESPN’s already paid for.
The NASCAR writer for the Oakland Press wrote a blog post giving kudos to ESPN for standing up to NASCAR. What are they standing up to NASCAR about? At the end of the day they’re only hurting themselves. ESPN is spending $270 million a year or $2.16 billion (from Sports Business Resource Guide) over the life of their contract for the rights to broadcast NASCAR races. Now you tell me, is it in ESPN’s best interest to say, “hey this product we’re broadcasting is really boring?” I don’t think so.
A couple of weeks ago Dustin Long did a wide-ranging interview about the state of the sport with Larry McReynolds, Kyle Petty and Jimmy Spencer. One of their big criticisms was the negativity that comes out of the sport’s media. While I think this was a pot calling the kettle black moment (they went on to criticize the sport pretty heavily) they made a good point.
Larry McReynolds said:
Darrell has put a great analogy. He goes, if you go to a restaurant and you’ve been going to that restaurant for years and you love that restaurant but you constantly read in the paper, it’s a bad restaurant, it’s a bad restaurant. Eventually, you’re going to say, I’m not going to that restaurant. Even if they rehire a complete new chef, staff, you’re still going to be hesitant about going back to that restaurant.
From time to time I like to watch old races and I’ll be honest with you, it really doesn’t look all that different. There aren’t constant battles for the lead, races do sometimes get spread out, and sometimes one car just dominates. The one big difference is you don’t hear Eli Gold or Ken Squier or Bob Jenkins criticizing the product. If you don’t believe me, track down a race from 10 or 15 years ago.
I don’t mean to suggest that NASCAR fans are more susceptible to this. But I do believe that this negativity runs rampant around here; more so than in other sports. When was the last time you were watching an NFL game and heard Joe Buck say how boring it was?
I think just like in every other sport, announcers need to walk a fine line. Criticize the league or sanctioning body for controversial decisions, fine; don’t drive fans off though by criticizing the product.