|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2017 04:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 21:59 |
|
|
I was literally typing in Discord that "we need a Nashville 2004-style finish" and didn't get to finish it. Red flags breed red flags.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2017 04:56
|
|
|
hopefully that was a preview for the weekend because lmao
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2017 05:47
|
|
|
Furniture Row should change the number on the 78 next season, as apparently it demands blood sacrifices to maintain pace: http://autoweek.com/article/nascar/nascar-cup-team-owner-barney-visser-has-successful-bypass-surgery-after-heart-attack If I were Erik Jones, I'd sleep with one eye open at this stage.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2017 15:20
|
|
|
NXS from Phoenix featuring scab pit crews for JRM cars and, as a result, other cars as well starts now, but who cares because  LUCAS OIL LATE MODELS ON NBCSN ALSO .e- https://twitter.com/NickBromberg/status/929811270508965888 CBJSprague24 fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Nov 12, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2017 21:42
|
|
|
lol
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:21
|
|
|
suck it Denny
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:27
|
|
|
It's the storybook ending at Phoenix where the underdog redeems himself! ...that NASCAR didn't want. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:41
|
|
|
Everything about that was perfect 
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:43
|
|
|
Suck my metaphorical dick Chase
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:45
|
|
|
well since Johnson is out I guess we have this format another year unchanged
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:48
|
|
|
Chase is just begging to be called Chokin' Chase Elliot or something
|
|
#
?
Nov 12, 2017 23:57
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 00:00
|
|
|
L_Harrison posted:Chase is just begging to be called Chokin' Chase Elliot or something "Chokes"? Still ends with the "s" sound.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 00:07
|
|
|
Let's see... F1, last race in 2014: 11 left. Soon to be 10 with Massa retiring. There were 20 drivers (technically 22 if you count Marussia but they folded before the end of the season). IndyCar had 22 fulltime entires (if you count Special Ed's split with him and Mike Conway as 1), and of those, at least 12 are confirmed to contracts next season. I think this gets overlooked a lot because of the backmarkers and field fillers who really do nothing except for run a race and show up on the score sheet tend to cycle through a lot. No one cares about them except LASTCAR. iospace fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Nov 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 06:19
|
|
|
As much as I dislike Denny, I wasn't a big fan of Chase's move. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, and you get what you have coming to you, but if we're consistent in our criticism then we can't simply laugh and clap at Chase' move. Overall, a pretty good race. I'm not sure that the stat about the 21 drivers without a ride in 2018 is inherently problematic. I would be interested in looking at those stats a bit more closely to determine who has been lost and how many of them really matter. I think the bigger problem is that the change over has been so sudden, and there are very young drivers established to fill the void. I think there are a few things that are contributing to the doom and gloom around the sport right now, warning:  .1) I could be wrong, but I assume that most of us on this forum are somewhere between 25 and 40, meaning that the oldest of us were born around 1977 and the youngest around 1992. If this is correct, then I think that the (current?) impending slew of retirements is hitting us specifically hard as these are the drivers that we really cut our teeth with. Yes, many of us were around for Dale Sr, DW, Wallace, Petty, maybe even Yarborough and Allison, but "our" generation of drivers really started with Jeff Gordon in 1993. I think this matters because we as a generation of fans are experiencing our first seismic shift from one generation of drivers to the next. Gordon is gone, Johnson's reign is definitely waning (he could still win another championship or two, but he's on the downslope regardless), and a new generation of drivers is emerging or waiting to emerge. I suspect this leaves us feeling a bit uneasy for the future. I for one will definitely feel a bit lost next year without Junior to root for, I suspect this is how my father has felt for decades since Harry Gant retired. This uneasiness would probably be easy to brush aside if it weren't for the next two issues. 2) The sport is hurting financially. We all know that dollars have dried up for the sport, sponsorship aren't what they use to be and viewership is down from the heights of 8-12 years ago. I don't think that the sport, since its inception, has ever had to really face a market downturn like this. From inception through the late 1980s, the sport was small and regional, growing at rate that was easy to control. The boom of the 90s and early Aughts was unprecedented, and so any correction would also be unprecedented. We are living through that correction right now, and there's no playbook for it because it's the first time it has happened to NASCAR. How do you replace a series sponsorship with a smaller one and maintain profits? It's never happened. Hell, I guarantee you that somewhere in NASACR's offices in Charlotte they still have Winston Cup letterhead, we aren't that far removed from that period. The point is that, for the first time maybe, the sport is looking at the reality that growth is not always linear, and that's unsettling because there is little living memory of bad times in NASCAR's offices. 3) Constant media coverage. While NASCAR media sucks and is quick to cover for the sport, there are still more critical eyeballs on the sport and its leadership than ever before. This constant coverage makes it hard to hide the fact that the sport is struggling. In 1980 there was very little coverage outside of Daytona, a race from North Wilksboro was not shown in its entirety, and if the place was half empty, no one cared. NASCAR could more easily craft its image and message when no one was paying attention. There simply was not as much coverage on the sport when guys like Pearson, Yarborough, Allison, Petty, and Elliott were being put out to pasture, so it didn't feel as climatic. But now, the generations of drivers that grew the sport to success are fading away, and the media's coverage of this is feeding into the feeling of instability. Paired with coverage (no matter how feeble) of the financial issues facing the sport, and things don't feel very rosy looking forward. I mention all of this because I find our current situation very interesting. I think its very likely that within three years a guy like Kyle Busch could actually be the elder statesman in the garage, and that guys like Harvick, Johnson, and Kurt Busch will be gone. The max exodus of talent/experience will be incredible. The 2019 or 2020 season could begin with a field of 40 drivers with a combined three or four championships, with Gordon, Stewart, Johnson, Harvick, and Kurt all retired, that would just about wipe-out all of the championships from 2000 forward. Unless guys like Larson and Logano turn it up in the next year or two (totally possible), then the 2019 or 2020 season could dawn with a cavernous void in championship level talent. I'm not sure there has ever been such a exodus of talent from the sport, it will be like one generation just STOPPED, and then another one began, instead of a more gradual changing of the guard. I have actually come around to both the stage racing and the Chase format. I think that the implementation of the Chase has been particularly problematic, but god drat- none of you can say that this poo poo isn't compelling as all hell. Next week, I know full well that my eyes will be glued pretty hard to Miami, and that's good for the sport. The thing that they need to remember is that you can't turn the sport around overnight. Leave the format alone for an indefinite number of years so that we can all become familiar with it (I wasn't sure until today if the points reset to zero for next week, or if everyone carried over bonus points), let the young drivers emerge naturally, and let the market reset the finances to a more sustainable level. Tweak things around the edges (I still think it would be a great idea to cut the season to end at Labor Day- but that wouldn't be a tweak as much as it would be hacking away at the sport) but leave the core components alone. I think that they have a product that is improved (nostalgia aside, when Rusty Wallace won his championship he finished something like 16th, two laps down, competition today is light years tighter) over what was being put out by the end of generation 4 and all of generation 5.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 06:48
|
|
|
Also, here's a take for you all: I think Chase and Denny are handling their beefs properly. Keep it on the track, minimal off-track poo poo like punches (I'm looking at you SRA).
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 07:19
|
|
|
iospace posted:Also, here's a take for you all: I think Chase and Denny are handling their beefs properly. Keep it on the track, minimal off-track poo poo like punches (I'm looking at you SRA). What did I miss from SRA????
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 07:22
|
|
|
the thing that is hurting nascar the most isn't the mass exodus of drivers, it's that the on-track product has been hot fuckin garbage for like a decade now. the decline in viewership started way before the big names started going away, those retirements are just hastening that decline. constantly changing the championship format is also not helping, i mean i hate the chase in all its forms but even then if they at least stuck to one fuckin format instead of changing poo poo around every year or two they'd prolly lose less fans just by virtue of viewers not having to learn a new points system every other season. DEEP STATE PLOT fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Nov 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 07:53
|
|
|
Denny's move was fine last week, Chase's was fine this week. That's short track racing and good bump and runs. Kenseth intentionally and as hard as possible taking out Logano last year was dangerous hometrack BS. I want to see Cindric taken out next week, but if he's intentionally Arca braked into the wall, I'll be critical of it. 21 being without a ride feels abnormally high, but not terribly concerning on it's own, the bigger problem is that so many of them have been those who were in top half rides. I don't know who is and isn't in rides next year across all three series, but the turnover numbers for to 50% rides would be far more interesting to compare. The whole chase, stages, and media aspect are all kind of tied together in the self inflicted damage they are doing though. During the "good years", the product was the on track racing. There were occasional week to week storylines, and when the points happened to align right towards the end of the year, it was some bonus extra drama that felt more natural. There was almost always some real racing going on somewhere in the field, and it was shown on tv and was the primary focus. Go watch some races from the 90s and keep track of how much they're showing/talking about racing, compared to "plotlines". I couldn't have cared less about who was racing the Busch or Truck series, it was still fun to watch. Compare to today, the on track racing is average to bad (an improvement this year over unwatchable of the last 10ish years) in Cup and Xfinity, Trucks are decent to good. The tv coverage is atrocious just from presentation aspect, no more wide angle shots, just super close ups made even worse by constantly using at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the screen for graphics. And then the announcing is less about what's presently going on around the track and mostly just rambling about storyline after storyline and trying to hype up drama (This I can partially defend as there often now isn't any real racing going on). But while I'll agree the Chase and stages have achieved their purpose of creating additional drama for entertainment, that's a completely fabricated source of it. Unless they're planning on putting the series onto TMZ, selling constant never ending "drama" and plotlines are a quick easy way to lose viewers in the longterm. Drama's only good when it's sporadic and natural. Football isn't much fun to watch when a game is bad, and if all they have to talk about is x story and y story for minutes at a time, people turn it off. Unless they want to go full WWE and script the races, they need to cut the bullshit and get the actual product of the racing good. Without a good racing product, you only get fans following their drivers to stick around, and those who will be entertained about your weird rear end points system until the novelty wears off. And since so many big names are retiring, and novelty doesn't last long, fans are going to continue to hemorrhage. The financial issues aren't really terribly important necessarily. I don't have or know where the numbers could be pulled from, but they still are probably not below mid 80s/early 90s financials still. All it means is a loss of parity, which again, isn't a major problem if you have pockets of actual racing. NASCAR themselves are making it a bigger issue purely by poaching any and every sponsor they can, that's the real problem that loss of money is going to impact if teams can't get anyone because NASCAR took them already.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 08:24
|
|
|
I watched about 60 laps total this year. I just get bored and either fall asleep or play pubg.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 14:40
|
|
|
SpitztheGreat posted:2) The sport is hurting financially. We all know that dollars have dried up for the sport, sponsorship aren't what they use to be and viewership is down from the heights of 8-12 years ago. I don't think that the sport, since its inception, has ever had to really face a market downturn like this. From inception through the late 1980s, the sport was small and regional, growing at rate that was easy to control. The boom of the 90s and early Aughts was unprecedented, and so any correction would also be unprecedented. We are living through that correction right now, and there's no playbook for it because it's the first time it has happened to NASCAR. How do you replace a series sponsorship with a smaller one and maintain profits? It's never happened. Hell, I guarantee you that somewhere in NASACR's offices in Charlotte they still have Winston Cup letterhead, we aren't that far removed from that period. The point is that, for the first time maybe, the sport is looking at the reality that growth is not always linear, and that's unsettling because there is little living memory of bad times in NASCAR's offices. The solution is not trying to maintain profits. It's being smart enough to understand that the boom of the 90s/00s was a once-in-a-lifetime situation that isn't going to repeat. NASCAR has one enormous strength: they're not publicly traded. There aren't vampiric shareholders demanding more and more money each quarter. And yet the France family are morons, and instead of doing the insanely obvious fix and doubling down on their traditional audience, they instead keep trying to pander to the masses, i.e. people who stopped watching NASCAR and aren't going to resume no matter what.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 14:46
|
|
|
SpitztheGreat posted:I'm not sure that the stat about the 21 drivers without a ride in 2018 is inherently problematic. I would be interested in looking at those stats a bit more closely to determine who has been lost and how many of them really matter. I think the bigger problem is that the change over has been so sudden, and there are very young drivers established to fill the void. I'm curious to look into who those 22 drivers are- off hand, I can think of Gordon, Stewart, Biffle, Edwards, Earnhardt, Jr, and Kenseth (which is quite a chunk of potential winner fire power at various points in time) and Danica (popular, although even her star faded a bit the last couple years). That's a third of the count with at least reasonable name recognition. The problem with the Chase, especially in its current form, is it's contrived. It's, as Denny put it, "bullshit chaos". NASCAR designed the Chase to try and have a 1992 final race every year and it happened a couple times (2004, 2011), but not enough, so after three tweaks, they turned it into the raceoff from Cars to determine a title. NASCAR no longer hopes they have a thriller to wrap up the season; now they have to have a thriller. But even THAT wasn't enough, so now we have an unintelligible point system which swings the points a driver is off the bubble in an elimination race during the races, and now they're the Playoffs instead of the Chase so the casual fan will get hype for it like they do every other sport's Playoffs; why be unique? I like the Stages (more than I can say for how I thought I'd feel), but I knew the stage point system was screwy once we got to Kansas and Kyle Larson was a sitting duck after blowing up in Stage 1. NASCAR wants so badly to have Game 7 MomentsTM, but part of the thrill or agony of a Game 7 is that the series deserved to drag on that long and, sometimes, a team which probably had no business getting that far in the playoffs only to win the series, is able to do it. (loving Penguins.) The only sport which has a single-elimination system and, thus, the potential for Game 7 Moments every round is...you guessed it, the NFL. The irony in NASCAR's quest to beat the NFL (hindsight being 20/20) is that, had they just left it alone for a few years at a time, they might have eventually had the NFL back up to them seeing as the NFL's luster appears to be wearing off a bit. e- wicka posted:The solution is not trying to maintain profits. It's being smart enough to understand that the boom of the 90s/00s was a once-in-a-lifetime situation that isn't going to repeat. NASCAR has one enormous strength: they're not publicly traded. There aren't vampiric shareholders demanding more and more money each quarter. And yet the France family are morons, and instead of doing the insanely obvious fix and doubling down on their traditional audience, they instead keep trying to pander to the masses, i.e. people who stopped watching NASCAR and aren't going to resume no matter what. NASCAR isn't publicly traded. ISC, however, is. Small sample size, but I attended one shareholder meeting for the hell of it while I was in high school (2004-05 timeframe) and on vacation in Daytona (we got to go to the small ballroom at Daytona USA most people don't get to see, which was cool). Bill Jr. presided over the meeting and the thing which stuck out to myself and my dad was, when one measure was voted on and a couple people voted against it, Bill's response out loud was "That's too drat bad.". It reeked of the same "We're going to do whatever we want anyway, tbh" feeling which has tanked the sport through its incompetence. OneDaytona being built seems like ISC is attempting to diversify a bit in case this thing totally goes to hell. CBJSprague24 fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Nov 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 16:28
|
|
|
The biggest problem I have with the current format is how once a driver has won once in the regular season, any further wins don't actually matter that much. It was a weird feeling when like, Harvick won race 2 in 2015 or whatever and my dad (a big Harvick fan) was like "wow, now there's going to be no tension for me until the fall"
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 16:32
|
|
|
Feels Villeneuve posted:The biggest problem I have with the current format is how once a driver has won once in the regular season, any further wins don't actually matter that much. It was a weird feeling when like, Harvick won race 2 in 2015 or whatever and my dad (a big Harvick fan) was like "wow, now there's going to be no tension for me until the fall" They do matter, though. MTJ had so many wins (and playoff points) that he was basically a lock to make it to Homestead. He'd already clinched a spot going into Phoenix in part because all of those extra wins giving him a massive points cushion. What's really dumb about it is that how all of those wins are completely useless in determining which of the final four wins the championship. Chase was 20 laps away from opening up the possibility of basically stealing a championship from drivers that are 10 times more deserving of it. The best tweak that can be done with the format in that regard is to get rid of giving the championship to the highest-place final four finisher. If you want to win the championship, you have to win the race. If none of the four do, then the driver with the most points, including stage and playoff points earned during the race, is the champion. If MTJ got taken out by an accident that was completely out of his hands, then he could still be in position to take a well-deserved season championship if the other three can't win the race. That makes a lot more sense to me than to declare someone like Chase the champion for finishing 12th in the last race.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 16:50
|
|
|
Feels Villeneuve posted:The biggest problem I have with the current format is how once a driver has won once in the regular season, any further wins don't actually matter that much. It was a weird feeling when like, Harvick won race 2 in 2015 or whatever and my dad (a big Harvick fan) was like "wow, now there's going to be no tension for me until the fall" That's how 2014 was for me as a Gordon fan. "Ok, cool, he's in.". The flipside of that is having a driver who's struggling, which was how 2015 was for me as a Gordon fan. "Well, he's like 11th in points and should be able to make it in, because the performance sure hasn't been there...". (That in itself is another comedy aspect of this system- I'd have taken it, but Jeff Gordon would've had no drat business being the 2015 champ, and I can't think of any scenario which would've been more bizarr--ohhhhh, yeah, right...)
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 16:54
|
|
|
CBJSprague24 posted:I'm curious to look into who those 22 drivers are- off hand, I can think of Gordon, Stewart, Biffle, Edwards, Earnhardt, Jr, and Kenseth (which is quite a chunk of potential winner fire power at various points in time) and Danica (popular, although even her star faded a bit the last couple years). That's a third of the count with at least reasonable name recognition. Let's see Retired: Gordon, Edwards, Junior, Ambrose, the Biff, Smoke, Danica, Vickers?, Scott No ride: Kurt, Kenseth, McDowell, Gillialand, Wise Moved to a different series: Allgaier, Mears, Yeley, Annett Part time: Sorenson, Moffitt I think that's about right.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 16:54
|
|
|
Another way of looking at 2014 to today is the most popular driver vote:quote:The top-10 vote-getters for this year's award (listed alphabetically): Wise was Dogemania, but still, 7 out of 10? Kahne would also be out of a ride if not for LFR.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:02
|
|
|
CBJSprague24 posted:Another way of looking at 2014 to today is the most popular driver vote: Well he took McDowells ride so its about the same.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:10
|
|
|
I’ve never personally understood the logic behind making winning a NASCAR title so dependent on winning a single race, when there’s so much that can happen in those races that’s entirely out of your control. It just doesn’t strike me as a good way to determine who’s actually good at stock car racing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:16
|
|
|
wicka posted:I’ve never personally understood the logic behind making winning a NASCAR title so dependent on winning a single race, when there’s so much that can happen in those races that’s entirely out of your control. It just doesn’t strike me as a good way to determine who’s actually good at stock car racing. NASCAR is dumb
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:18
|
|
|
NASCAR has never had a good points system and it's appeal should be based on week-to-week racing action, and not the points standings. The 90s were the biggest growth decade in the history of the sport and there were like maybe 3 exciting points races out of ten years.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:18
|
|
|
Apart from removing the splitters, what would you suggest to improve the on-track action then? And yeah, I know "more short tracks" is a thing (and I wish it was).
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:24
|
|
|
I think the on-track action has been pretty decent this year. It will take a decade or more to win back fans though.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:25
|
|
|
It's been better by far, but decent? The tires are still atrocious, they need more falloff.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:27
|
|
|
Agreed. It's not like 2012-2013 (when I stopped watching regularly for good) where literally every race I saw was atrocious and nothing mattered except track position. Loved races where someone would "dominate", have a bad pit stop and be stuck in 11th for the rest of the day unable to pass because you simply could not overtake on track.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 17:31
|
|
|
The racing this year has been good. The points system is a cluster gently caress
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 18:00
|
|
|
I think had they named the stages heats, no one would give it a second thought.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 18:04
|
|
|
iospace posted:I think had they named the stages heats, no one would give it a second thought. I don't even mind the stage racing
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 18:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 21:59 |
|
|
iospace posted:I think had they named the stages heats, no one would give it a second thought. Good idea, absolutely terrible execution.
|
|
#
?
Nov 13, 2017 18:10
|
|