Boys move this to Nascar when you see fit.
Had the bets down. Had the printouts of teams from our Nascar contest handy. I was good to go. Nascar wasn't. For the second time this year [the first being Vegas], yesterday I dozed off on the living room couch for 40 or 50 laps. Wait till one groove Chicagoland.
Bristol, Rockingham, Darlington, Martinsville: they all had me a whoopin' and a hollerin' while sitting on the edge of the same couch.
Now another of the ubiquitous new cookie cutter super speedways was the center of our Sunday attention. This one was just outside of LA where ironically enough a stuntman field filler walking away from a shunt with a padded wall was the one break from what prooved to be the center of our Sunday boredom.
The stands were packed though and the 90210 crowd basked in 99 degree heat. This is new, trendy and cool in some respects at least for now. This new LA fad is just that...but they will find it boring soon enough because say what you will, it is boring not to mention too hot in the desert. And everyone will find it boring soon enough if not already. And just to make sure, we give them Darlington Labor Day at the same venue so that everyone OD's on boredom.
Nascar and Madison Avenue greed is running in what best can be described as the baseball 70's and the days of the cookie cutter, carpeted, Coliseums where only the team uniforms belied their locale and which almost ruined the game. Not coincidentally in our analogy, this was the decade of Wayne Garland's $1,000,000 contract which in 1976 was nothing more than a harbinger of lunacy. That game had already begun to lose popularity for quite some time. The astroturf game had already turned off purists. But baseball scoffed. This new racing is turning off purists. But Nascar scoffs.
We have a track in the Southeast where a railroad running throuh the neighboring hills causes the track layout to be unique and racing to be exciting. We had ballparks where outfield dimensions were determined by the block of city real estate and the configuration of those parks was based on the direction of bordering streets. The couple of those remaining are now our most cherished playing fields. Now every city is attemting to replicate those unique playing fields but only after blowing up the bowl shaped disasters.
Here is Nascar's future as I see it.
It won't go back to running at the old hallowed tracks of the Southeast. Maybe many years from now and maybe not so many, but it will eventually run at newly built tracks which will be the Camden Yard's, PNC's, Pac Bells etc, etc and etc. Boring racing will only go so far. These new venues will be built as shrines to the roots of the sport. These tracks will differ in size, banking, layout and such. They will perhaps offer artificial yet cleverly designed symbols, billboards, what have you bringing a touch or some connection to where this all came from. A working still on site would appeal to me.
Nascar will learn the hard way. My friends who think I'm nuts yelling for 4 hours at rednecks [well OK, but there's still Sterling Marlin and JR.] making left turns may be right. The sport is turning it's back on the good ole boys in North Carolina and other Thunder Road locales. Reckon thats OK though cause there's damn better racing on Saturday night at most all local tracks in them hills than there was yesterday in Cali or March 7th in Vegas.
Had the bets down. Had the printouts of teams from our Nascar contest handy. I was good to go. Nascar wasn't. For the second time this year [the first being Vegas], yesterday I dozed off on the living room couch for 40 or 50 laps. Wait till one groove Chicagoland.
Bristol, Rockingham, Darlington, Martinsville: they all had me a whoopin' and a hollerin' while sitting on the edge of the same couch.
Now another of the ubiquitous new cookie cutter super speedways was the center of our Sunday attention. This one was just outside of LA where ironically enough a stuntman field filler walking away from a shunt with a padded wall was the one break from what prooved to be the center of our Sunday boredom.
The stands were packed though and the 90210 crowd basked in 99 degree heat. This is new, trendy and cool in some respects at least for now. This new LA fad is just that...but they will find it boring soon enough because say what you will, it is boring not to mention too hot in the desert. And everyone will find it boring soon enough if not already. And just to make sure, we give them Darlington Labor Day at the same venue so that everyone OD's on boredom.
Nascar and Madison Avenue greed is running in what best can be described as the baseball 70's and the days of the cookie cutter, carpeted, Coliseums where only the team uniforms belied their locale and which almost ruined the game. Not coincidentally in our analogy, this was the decade of Wayne Garland's $1,000,000 contract which in 1976 was nothing more than a harbinger of lunacy. That game had already begun to lose popularity for quite some time. The astroturf game had already turned off purists. But baseball scoffed. This new racing is turning off purists. But Nascar scoffs.
We have a track in the Southeast where a railroad running throuh the neighboring hills causes the track layout to be unique and racing to be exciting. We had ballparks where outfield dimensions were determined by the block of city real estate and the configuration of those parks was based on the direction of bordering streets. The couple of those remaining are now our most cherished playing fields. Now every city is attemting to replicate those unique playing fields but only after blowing up the bowl shaped disasters.
Here is Nascar's future as I see it.
It won't go back to running at the old hallowed tracks of the Southeast. Maybe many years from now and maybe not so many, but it will eventually run at newly built tracks which will be the Camden Yard's, PNC's, Pac Bells etc, etc and etc. Boring racing will only go so far. These new venues will be built as shrines to the roots of the sport. These tracks will differ in size, banking, layout and such. They will perhaps offer artificial yet cleverly designed symbols, billboards, what have you bringing a touch or some connection to where this all came from. A working still on site would appeal to me.
Nascar will learn the hard way. My friends who think I'm nuts yelling for 4 hours at rednecks [well OK, but there's still Sterling Marlin and JR.] making left turns may be right. The sport is turning it's back on the good ole boys in North Carolina and other Thunder Road locales. Reckon thats OK though cause there's damn better racing on Saturday night at most all local tracks in them hills than there was yesterday in Cali or March 7th in Vegas.
