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NASCAR takes steps to return to stock car racing’s glory days

Joey Logano is the defending season champion as the NASCAR Cup Series embarks on a campaign in pursuit of greater grip with its fans, sponsors and TV ratings.
Chris O’Meara/AP
Joey Logano is the defending season champion as the NASCAR Cup Series embarks on a campaign in pursuit of greater grip with its fans, sponsors and TV ratings.
George Diaz - 2014 Orlando Sentinel staff portraits for new NGUX website design.
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Sipping a cold beer while chest deep in a steaming jacuzzi on the infield near Turn 1, Michael Elliott is living large on an idyllic Friday evening at Daytona International Speedway.

The movie “Talladega Nights” plays on a television 20 feet away within Elliott’s two-RV compound. On cue, the 53-year-old delivers a line from the movie, bellowing, “I’m all jacked up on Mountain Dew!”

The scene is so 2006, the year the movie and the sport were major hits across the United States.

Times have changed, Elliott will be the first to tell you.

“NASCAR has a massive problem,” he said.

Tell the people in charge of the sport something they already don’t know.

Attendance and TV ratings are down, sponsorships are more elusive and many of the sport’s biggest stars have retired during recent years.

NASCAR’s Cup Series kicks off the 2019 season at the Daytona 500 on the precipice of a major overhaul aimed to return the sport to its glory days.

Opinions vary how to get there, or whether it even is possible.

“If they let them run, let them race, I think NASCAR will be back,” said George Martin of Palmyra, N.J. “I really do.”

NASCAR officials, car owners, manufacturers and drivers hope Martin is right.

The sport’s many stakeholders have invested considerable manpower and brain power to find ways to breathe life back into the sport. Wide-sweeping changes set for 2021 likely are coming to the schedule, the length of races, sponsorship structure and the cars.

“I would say all things are in play,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps said.

In the immediate future, a new rules package is in place in 2019 to encourage more side-by-side formations and opportunities for cars to pass each other. Beginning next week in Atlanta, cars will have less horsepower and more drag — courtesy of a larger rear spoiler — to stabilize the cars and offer drivers more maneuverability.

Defending Cup Series champion Joey Logano is taking a wait-and-see attitude, but he also can guess what’s coming.

“I totally expect to crash more cars,” Logano said. “As cars get closer and drivers are more aggressive, a mistake will create a bigger crash. You can’t get away from that. … And usually when there’s more crashes, there’s more conflict.”

Crashes and conflict between drivers make for better races, storylines and ticket sales.

Martin, who has not missed a Daytona 500 since 2001, and other ardent NASCAR fans are starved to see fewer rules and more aggressive racing on Sundays.

“They need to quit trying to sanitize the sport — let ’em race,” said Chuck Marks of Red House, Va. “Go to the dirt track; the grandstands are full.”

Stock car racing never will return completely to its rough-hewn roots or resemble dirt-track racing.

But Phelps said organizers are attentive to a frustrated fan base that for decades was arguably the most loyal in sports.

Phelps’ message to fans heading into the sport’s showcase event is simple: “I would say the sport that you love is listening to you.”

Phelps, in turn, is perhaps the key figure tasked with delivering NASCAR’s message and long-range vision to the masses. The 56-year-old does not shy away from a challenge.

This past Thursday, Phelps took a spin in an F-16 with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds, at one point enduring a g-force of 9.2 without either passing out or puking.

“Or something worse,” Phelps quipped. “I was 0-for-3, which I was happy about.”

Putting NASCAR back on an upward trajectory could be similarly daunting.

“I don’t know the answer to the problem,” Marks said. “I think they’ve created an animal. I don’t know how they’re going to fix it.”

Marks, 56, attended his first race in 1986 in Martinsville, Va. For the next three decades, he would attend at least a half-dozen races a year — one year Marks went to 20.

The Daytona 500 might be Marks’ only race this season. Last year, he gave up his tickets to Richmond and Martinsville.

Disenchanted fans like Marks are in NASCAR’s crosshairs as it looks to re-energize its core base.

During the sport’s halcyon days 15 years ago, NASCAR looked beyond the people who traveled to races and unfailingly filled the stands.

“Did we take them for granted at one point that, ‘Hey, they’re always going to be there, so are we going to chase that fan over there?’ ” Phelps said. “The answer is: We might have done that at one point. I don’t think we’ve done that in a long time, frankly.”

NASCAR also looks to catch the attention of America’s youth and engender the next generation of stock-car racing fans.

That could be a much bigger ask.

Blame Uber.

“Cars are not important,” three-time season champion and 72-year-old Darrell Waltrip said. “Back in my day, I was a car guy — fast cars and hot rods and big motors and loud motors. Kids today don’t even need a car if they get a driver’s license; they’ll just get an Uber.

“They don’t care if they have a car.”

A sport whose foundation is fast cars now looks for other ways to connect with teens and 20-somethings.

“There has been a decline in car culture, for sure,” Phelps said. “We need to change with the times and stay relevant.”

To win young fans, he said, NASCAR is at the forefront of sports gambling, involved in eSports and partnered with video-game makers. Creating a unique experience on a person’s mobile devices and open areas at race tracks, like beer gardens, are other strategies aimed at Generation Z.

NASCAR hopes Gen 7 cars are a winner with fans, too.

Targeted for the 2021 season, the vehicles are expected to more closely resemble a car the man or woman on the street can purchase.

“Here’s what I think is the biggest problem,” Elliott said while lounging in his hot tub. “It’s NASCAR. The S is stock — stock car. They’re not stock cars anymore. They build them in a shop; 98 percent of it is prefab construction.

“They need to get back to stock portion.”

NASCAR’s to-do list is long.

When things were good, many believed stock-car racing was the next big thing in American sports.

Tracks sprouted up in places like Chicago, Kansas City, Kentucky and Fort Worth. Stars like Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart were household names.

These days, even well-established tracks like Talladega are struggling to fill seats.

“When they tried to take it from a regional sport to a nationwide sport, I think they got a little carried away,” Marks said. “If you lived on the East Coast, you could go to any race on a day trip. You could leave at 7 o’clock in the morning and be at the race track.”

Trimming the 36-race schedule is a strong possibility.

“We need to streamline the schedule,” said Waltrip, who raced 31 times or fewer during his three championship seasons. “And I’m in the TV industry, so the more races we have, the more TV time we get, and that’s good for us.

“The bottom line is there are too many races.”

Meanwhile, the sport has too few stars.

During the past few years, Gordon, Earnhardt Jr. and Stewart retired. Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Danica Patrick moved on, too.

NASCAR is banking on a batch of promising young drivers, including Logano, Chase Elliott, pole-sitter William Byron, 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon and runner-up Bubba Wallace.

“I think the best crop of young drivers we’ve had in two decades,” Phelps said.

Elliott was voted the sport’s most popular driver last season while Wallace, NASCAR’s only African-American driver, is a fan favorite.

The 28-year-old Dillon won at least one new admirer this week.

“We were out here in the RV Park and Austin Dillon stopped by and hung out with us,” New Jersey’s Martin said. “That was cool; he just got a new fan.”

NASCAR’s challenges are not unique.

Football is now America’s pastime, yet Super Bowl ratings reached a 10-year low and SEC stadiums are increasingly harder to fill.

On Sunday, NASCAR will have no such concern. The Daytona 500 is sold out.

“Daytona’s different,” Elliott said. “Daytona is Daytona. I don’t think you’re going to have a hard time getting people here.”

The next few years will be the true test of NASCAR’s potential long-term success.

The issues are countless and complicated. But Martin believes there is a simple solution to get fans back to the track.

“They got to come out and see it,” he said. “The TV does it no justice. Coming here, the scene, the smells, the sounds, seeing the cars going by at 200 miles an hour … there’s nothing like it.”