Too late to bail out NASCAR?

Funny how this thread died a month before the season started. Like any sport, if you don't care for it, don't watch. I don't care for basketball, but I don't root for its demise, either. By the way, the one car teams were at Daytona, and will always continue to be. NASCAR is far from dead, with NO bailout!

It really doesn't matter... Soon there will be 34 Toyotas going around the track and nobody but the sponsers to watch.. Ever since Toyota came on, the fan attendace has gone down and will continue to go down..Nascar is on a self destruct road..and really doesn't care about the fans, just the money..

Most of NASCAR's revenues (i.e. ISC and the France family) are related to long-term television contracts and ticket revenues. However, the racing teams get support from the car companies and sponsors. NASCAR does not need a bailout, but they should share the wealth with the men and women who make the sport as popular as it is. It is time the France family shared the wealth.

Most of NASCAR's revenues (i.e. ISC and the France family) are related to long-term television contracts and ticket revenues. However, the racing teams get support from the car companies and sponsors. NASCAR does not need a bailout, but they should share the wealth with the men and women who make the sport as popular as it is. It is time the France family shared the wealth.

Why not have Nascar switch over to clean burning renewable alcohol that is considered a green fuel. The engines could easily be switched over to this by just minor carburator modifications. Don't let this sport die. At least the people who get prize money are winners instead of in other sports (football, basket ball, baseball and the like) where the athletes can sit on the bench and earn Millions of dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nascar's fan base consists mostly of REDNECKS. Anyone who can sit and watch cars go round and round for 4 hours is not a rocket scientist. Without gasoline powered V8's, it would die. Ever traveled down south?

DorkChop, ever been to a NASCAR race? I thought not.

... the R&D costs to change today are likely prohibitive. As far as driver ages, Earnhardt Sr, D. Jarrett, D. Waltrip for example, all started Cup level driving while in their 20's. Out of the top 10 drivers in 2008, the youngest was 23 and the oldest was 41. Most are in the 30's. Hardly Drivers Ed material.

NASCAR is forty three cars running nose to tail at upwards of 200MPH. It's about the competition of close quarter racing over 3+ hours covering a couple hundred miles. It's not high tech, it's a dog fight. The type of fuel really doesn't matter but the R&

How about all those fat assed fans go out and watch bicycle racing. It's all there: high tech composites,electronics, drafting, spectacular crashes, speed (50+kmph on a 7Kg bike is really the equivalent of 150mph in a safety cage) and best of all no fuels other than glycogen.

Weintraub is projecting his neo-pagan environmentalism on a sport that that laughs at and disregards his kind. As long as there are tens of millions of loyal NASCAR fans who revel in excess CO2 the sport will not only survive but prosper. It's about the fans spending money not about the sponsors. Get it?

Why is TM World commenting on this ? You might as well talk about abortion, poverty, class warefare, 1960's advanced principles, big-bang spiritualism, etc. Alternative energy will arrive on Free Market's back. Please, please just stick to oscopes, etc..

Why is TM World commenting on this ? You might as well talk about abortion, poverty, class warefare, 1960's advanced principles, big-bang spiritualism, etc. Alternative energy will arrive on Free Market's back. Please, please just stick to oscopes, etc..

Back in the 1960's and 70's, NASCAR and GN racing was based on real street cars and teams were something we could relate to. Now, NASCAR is just another racing formula with specially developed cars with a shell that is the same for all makes and painted to remotely resemble some make of car. Pretty hard to get excited about it any more. It has takes huge amounts of sponsor money and promotion. It is like so many other overpaid and overhyped pro sports. It has outlived it's original intention and it is time to move on with something that better fits todays limited resources environment.

here we are debating race cars, and this comment app doesn't even work right!!

The best way to save NASCAR is to tell its fans that a bunch of Yankee know it alls want it to die! There are one car teams in every small town (and city) in this country, just waiting for their chance to take a checkered flag. The Big Three have made the track owners and TV stations rich

How about "electric nascar"? That would be cool!

How about "electric nascar"? That would be cool!

All ya gotta do to save NASCAR is provide free beer at the race track. Problem solved. Res Ipsa Loqitor!

@Mr. Write: When you can produce for me a model or models for global warming that includes the identification of the sources, ranges, and probability distributions of all possible sources of model error, and that includes all the effects that all those sources of error have on the model(s), THEN you will be ready to hector the world on their choices. Until then, don't you think that perhaps you might be a bit less ready to pronounce sentence and carry out executions over things that you may not be qualified to assess? @jimmymac: The sentiment may be a good one. The problem is that automation is now so good and so relatively cheap that there aren't going to BE any high-paying blue-collar jobs, even if manufacturing returns to America. This is a fundamental that too many Americans (and a good portion of their leaders) are continuing to ignore. Can't turn the clock back...we are going to have to face the fact that (a) almost all of our population is going to have to be retrained to do new things, and (b) we don't have an education system that can possibly support that kind of activity.

Car racing, space stations, F-1, shuttle launches.... kill them all. Governments and companies must invest in job producing enterprises and green technology. Who needs NASCAR, space exploration or F-1 for the foreseeable future? Not very many of us.

With up to 80% of NASCAR's income coming from promotional dollars, it is not a sustainable formula no matter how you work it. Motor companies cannot even sell efficient cars in this economic climate...thus the need to advertise their brand is almost eliminated, not to mention the fact that any non essential promotion the big 3 do with bailout money will be looked at in a negative view. Do you want to save NASCAR ? Change the format, a set distance, a time limit & and only give each team an (almost) unachievable amount of fuel to cover said distance. And let Americans do what they do best... INNOVATE. Unlimited engine design, unlimited body design (yea, I know you loose the S in NASCAR...deal with it) Let Auto Racing dictate automotive design and let the auto companies compete with carryover innovations to their production models. Efficiency, Aerodynamics & Safety in the new NAEASCAR.

They still use carburetors, don't they?

NASCAR should go the way of the dodo bird. The people like motorhead and the others who support the blatant destruction of our natural resources at the expense of others epitomize the problem, especially those facing the big 3. Greed, selfishness, and ignorance to the overall human race. Screw NASCAR and the blatant waste of resources it emplores!

NASCAR has made mistakes in the way they are running the cup races,but the racing itself is still very popular. The real farce is the crying some people are doing about global warming. If anyone looks at the real scientific evidence, global warming is a name used by fanatics to promote their own agendas, including costing the everyday man and women a great deal of money that could be spent for much more necessary reasons. The weather has always changed but now when it doesn't stay the same, the Global Warming fanatics say it is to unusual to be natural. B.S.

NASCAR will adapt once the whole car industry does. Its stock car for a reason, the majority of cars produced are gasoline fueled. It will change the whole strategy of the race, no more fuel worries if the batteries can run for 500 miles full out. If they could only make better tires too.

NASCAR will adapt once the whole car industry does. Its stock car for a reason, the majority of cars produced are gasoline fueled. It will change the whole strategy of the race, no more fuel worries if the batteries can run for 500 miles full out. If they could only make better tires too.

I don't agree that NASCAR needs a bailout - and I don't agree that fans don't want to see and hear fast and loud "stock" cars blasting around race tracks. Perhaps they'll need to temporarily tighten their collective belts (perhaps reduce purses and ticket prices to keep the fans showing up at the tracks) but like the downturn this will only be temporary. I believe NASCAR will need to change some aspects of the business model as time goes on but I don't expect such a glacially slow to respond entity such as NASCAR to do anything too rash in the short term (heck - they still run pushrod V-8s!).

HANS devices have been available and under development since the mid-1980s, and some drivers used HANS. Dale Earnhardt's death put a spotlight on the issue.

NASCAR is on its way out, period.

A move to alternate fuels and electric power could energize the sport and bring new attendance, if it's approached with the right forward-looking attitude. Create new classes of cars: funnycar electric high-torque, high-speed dual-power hybrids, or the simple 1/4 mile drag racer with superconducting coils (billowing clouds of liquid nitrogen steam) and an audio system that plays the earth-shaking roar of a 1970 power beast at 150 dB "

Honda has pulled out of F1 racing

(ate half me post) ...adapt or die; I fear the latter, as it does seem very resistant to change. It took the death of Dale Earnhardt to bring about the introduction of HANS harnesses, and I do hope such complacency won't kill NASCAR too. If it does, I'll see you down the drag strip; despite the extreme nature of Top Fuel cars, it's possible to run one on a budget.

Formula 1 can see the writing on the wall, and is introducing cost-cutting measures such as longer-life components (e.g. engine and gearbox) and restrictions on testing. In some ways that's a shame a F1 has always been the cutting edge of automotive development, but needs must if it ensures survival. F1 is beginning to acknowledge eco development now with the introduction of regenerative braking, so expect to see the fruits of this research appearing in road legal cars sometime soon. As for NASCAR, it must also adapt or die