Can someone explain to me the allure of NASCAR?
If you’re planning on heading south this weekend through Delaware, you might want to adjust your plans. You see, NASCAR is in Dover through Sunday, which means your scenic drive to the beach might be interrupted by gas-guzzling RVs making their way to the races.
NASCAR remains a huge economic engine for Kent County. An economic impact study hasn’t been done on the race since 1991, but Cindy Small at Kent County Tourism tells me that the two races are the top two draws in Dover for the entire year – no other event brings as many people at once to Kent County.
Good thing Grotto’s Pizza opened their new Dover location in time for the race.
Tags: Dover Downs, NASCAR
1. They serve beer.
2. Some of the drivers are pretty good looking.
3. It brings lots of money to the state.
Have tickets for Sunday. Have beer for Sunday. Will tear sleeves off T-shirt and wear Nascar baseball hat in order to ‘blend’. Will send video of drunks being escorted out if available.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. There’s more interesting places to get beer (and get better beer) that even have air conditioning. Watching cars just drive around in circles waiting for some of them to crash sounds about as much fun as watching that TV yule log burning at Christmas.
Don’t miss the Drunk March that accompanies the end of the race as hordes of besotted race fans take to the streets and block a north bound lane of Rt.13, ya’ gotta see it. Especially if you think race fans are stereotyped.
Okay… still not getting it. 😉
Nascar followers..love of God and Country
FREEDOM CARS!!!!
The lure has lost some of its allure. Uh, that sentence needs some work, but not now.
Attempts to broaden the appeal beyond the south have begun to fade, TV ratings and attendance are down, cookie-cutter tracks have added a generic quality, the current crop of drivers are boring and/or assholes, and the last two prototype cars have led to ‘follow the leader’ racing.
Still, it’s the only place outside of a tea party rally where you can see confederate flags in abundance.
I suppose that’s something.
Go fast. Turn left. Don’t crash. What’s not to get?
I “get it” and appreciate it as a motorsport, its just not my thing. Compared to endurance, road and rally racing, NASCAR is the stone age of professional racing. But since US corporations haven’t figured out to market a superior product to the masses, we are stuck with roundy-round racin’
I am pretty sure it is still the most watched and attended sporting event in the United State.
I don’t like golf either (I “get” that sport, too) but since Tea Partiers don’t support that I guess we won’t be making cynical snide comments about that.
So. You can’t explain the “allure”, either, then?
Seriously, if you come to Delaware Liberal to be free of cynical snide comments, it is well past time to tell you that you’ll have a pretty long wait for that.
Exhaust and really bad food/alcohol and RVs. Dover and NASCAR – It’s a match made in heaven.
“NASCAR TV ratings take big plunge in 2012
Coverage on Fox, TNT and ESPN averaged a 3.6 Nielsen rating and 5.8 million viewers through 35 of 36 races (not including Sunday’s season-ending race at Homestead), down 5 percent and 10 percent respectively from last year, giving up all of the gains the sport made last year, which was its first annual ratings increase since 2005. Ratings among advertisers’ favorite demographic, 18- to 34-year-olds, fell to a 0.9 rating, down 25 percent from last year’s 1.2.”
Source: The Sporting News
I blame the Obama economy for targeting the favorite sports of the people in states that voted for Romney. The Obamacare Death Panels will probably deny treatment to NASCAR fans and gun owners.
I can’t really explain it either, I can only add that it used to be a homegrown sport featuring “stock cars” – cars that could actually be bought at the showroom, and with some safety improvements be ready to race. The appeal then was you rooted for your favorite car marque or the local homeboy. Then Detroit got involved upping the ante with their Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday program, making stock cars that weren’t so stock. Those days are long gone, the cars today aren’t even facsimiles of production cars anymore and people root for the corporate sponsors – the M&M’s car instead of whether it is a Chevy or a Ford. That part I don’t get. If you want to see grassroots racing that is actually kinda fun, check out The US 13 Dragway in Delmar. Perfect for people with short attention spans.
Look I don’t get opera, but some people do. Who wants to sit for three hours in a tie and suit and listen to people sing in a foreign language? Well some do. Just not me. Though some from up North might say that the after race interviews of drivers are spoken in a foreign language! Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. I was once one of those people who would not miss a race on TV and would record them when I was away, have been to Dover also to watch them live. I have lost my love of NASCAR because of rule changes and over marketing(too many commercials). The appeal is different for different types of fans. You have the motor heads who just love all things cars. You have those who are waiting for the crashes. You have the female fans who think their drivers are hunks. There is the sponsor aspect, they root for the driver of a car sponsored by a product or organization they like. My brother worked at DuPont, so Jeff Gordon was his guy. Then there is also the social fans, the people who travel the circuit and party, some never actually go inside the tracks and see the race, it’s all about the tailgate.
That being said, “What is two mile long and has three teeth?” answer, ” the line at the porta-potty at a NASCAR race!”.