Here’s a personal admission: NASCAR never interested me growing up. Sitting, during an afternoon, watching cars go round and round on TV was somewhere between golf “pre-Tiger Woods” and observing grass growing. Oddly, with age comes open-mindedness.
NASCAR is no longer the sport of the stereotypical slack-jawed redneck. From a marketing standpoint, there might not be a league or association that does it better then NASCAR. Brand marketing? NASCAR fans not only know their driver by the make of the car but by the sponsor on the hood, the rear, and above the door.
 Two-time Cup Series winner Terry Labonte says of the safety side of NASCAR, “Everybody kind of wanted to ignore it and it kind of caught up with them.” |
Truthfully, before this column goes any farther, it is only honest to admit that I still don’t sit inside on a sunny Sunday afternoon to watch the boys go round and round. Yet my appreciation for this sport (yes, it is a sport) has grown tremendously.
Specifically, the admiration is for the science of the sport. Every twist and turn of a nanometer. Fuel injection, balance, and alignment. In baseball, you cheat by placing cork in your bat. NASCAR’s equivalent is raising the rear of your car to influence the aerodynamics. The control of these delicate features is the main reason drivers were less then excited by the innovation of the Car of Tomorrow.
“I think the bottom line is that everyone’s got to remember they developed this car for safety reasons,” said retired driver and two-time Cup Series winner Terry Labonte. “They were able to incorporate a lot of safety features in the car that weren’t in the older cars.”
The Car of Tomorrow is the new body design on NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series created with the concepts of “safety innovations, performance and competition, and cost efficiency for teams,” according to NASCAR.com. NASCAR’s safety restrictions have grown leaps and bounds in the past half-decade. Sadly, the landmark reason came at the death of the sports’ legend Dale Earnhardt.
“Years ago, the safety side of it was something people didn’t talk about a whole lot,” said Labonte. “Everybody kind of wanted to ignore it and it kind of caught up with them.”
The car enhances the safety of the drivers at the same time the technological advancement has erased several drivers comfort level inside their cars as well as their teams’ understanding of the new design.
“If they’ve got things going good, the team’s running good, and the car’s working good, they don’t want nothing to change,” added Labonte. “So this is a whole new deal. The car is completely different. The set up is different. You know, I can see why a lot of guys don’t like it.”
NEXTEL Cup drivers have all been dealt the same hand, and despite the changes which are uniform to all teams, the bottom line remains the same: win.
“It’s like anything else, when the competition is faced with something new a lot of them kind of don’t like it and will complain about it or whatever. But I think after they run a while, everybody’s going to get used to it, adapt to it, and make it work,” laughingly adds Labonte. “Somebody’s going to win a race every Sunday, so you’re either going to complain about it and not run well or work and get it figured out.”
Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN 840am. 4pm-6pm M-F.