Recently I have heard some spectacularly misinformed arguments
as to why NASCAR should ban Cup drivers from racing in the Nationwide series.
1 “Cup drivers stop young up-and-coming drivers getting
rides.”
No, the ride is available for a fee and is open to anyone
with the money (and licence requirement) to fill it. Development drivers are
charged by the team for the privilege of being development drivers. It is not
difficult to become a development NASCAR driver, you just turn up at a team
with a large cheque. Most of the youngsters that you see in NNS have their
drives paid for by investors. Often it is family money, sometimes corporate; it
doesn’t really matter. A regular NNS “Back row Joe” that doesn’t have the money
to run at the front, still won’t have the money to run at the front when the
Cup drivers are no longer there.
2. “If the Cup drivers were not there, there would be more sponsorship
money for the NNS regulars.”
No. There is not a queue of companies waiting for their
chance to get their name on a front running NASCAR. Sponsorship simply doesn’t
work like that. I have seen a marketing proposal from Roush Fenway Racing that
actually uses the fact that Cup drivers run in NNS as one of its selling
points. Sponsors go racing for a reason, a return on their investment. They are
not going to start throwing money at people they have never heard of just
because there is no-one else to sponsor. They will most likely take their money
to another sport or event.
3. “The racing will be better without cup drivers”
No. If that was true, you would never watch the Sprint Cup.
If you want to know what NASCAR looks like without NASCAR drivers in it, watch
ARCA. That is not to say the racing in
ARCA is bad, but is it better than any of the NASCAR series? At its best I
think it is the same.
4. “NNS would be more popular without the Cup drivers.
NASCAR needs to listen to the fans.”
Possibly. I have seen no polls about the popularity of Cup
drivers in NNS. But I do have statistics showing that NNS is already the second
most popular motorsport in the USA, so how much more popular will it get?
NASCAR have little to gain and at lot to lose by making a massive change like banning
Cup drivers. If they made that decision and they were wrong, they would kill
the NNS stone dead within 6 months.
A decision like this will
change NNS marketable value and you have to remember it takes a hell of a lot
of money to put one of those cars on the grid. All of a sudden you will get
sponsors like Monster Energy projecting a higher return for their investment if
they just run part time on a Cup car. Smaller sponsors would see the same
return for a smaller investment in the Truck Series. It is a tight rope and not
one I would expect NASCAR to start chopping around unless they can be
completely certain of the outcome.
I think the truth of the matter is that some people just don’t
want Kyle Busch winning everything. That is a fine opinion to hold, but I would never support any system that penalises drivers and teams for being good at
their job. Much less suggest that the governing body risk destroying an entire series just to stop one driver
from winning.
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| He turns up at Latemodel races too! |
***All the crap you see written here is Kelvin's opinion and not that of his associates, race team or marketing partners.***
