A NASCAR driver from the 1970s would be shocked to his core looking at how different professional stock car racing is today. The characters on the track and the way they go about things would be the biggest surprise of them all. In a recent conversation with the comedian Bert Kreischer, Trackhouse Racing owner Justin Marks shared his thoughts on this.
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Kreischer asked Marks how much better NASCAR is today compared to the old days. Marks noted that it is an entirely different game today. He explained, “I’m really into the history of the sport because back then it was, I mean these guys were hardcore. There’s a video of Dick Trickle lighting a cigarette under caution during the race and smoking before he goes back green again.
“These guys would party and the whole thing. But now, you know, this guy Jimmie Johnson came and ruined it for everybody. He started working out and exercising.”
Jimmie Johnson created one of the biggest impacts on NASCAR when he came into the sport. He was a strict disciplinarian who went about things in a certain way. For instance, Marks remembered how he used to run a 5k in the infield before races.
This forced other drivers and teams to adopt similar methods to try and beat him. As the world knows, they seldom could. Marks continued to point out that drivers train like real athletes today with simulators, technical data, and psychologists.
Marks wants to bring fresh stories to NASCAR fans
The latest update to come out of Trackhouse Racing is that Daniel Suarez will not be retained beyond 2025. The Mexican has been with the team since it was launched in 2021. But all things must come to an end and Suarez was no longer part of the team’s long-term plans. This decision is something that the owner took to satisfy a greater cause.
He told Kreischer that he thinks of himself as a storyteller and detailed, “We want to bring great stories to the race. We want to bring things that get the fans excited about. We’ve done a lot of things where we’ve gotten super creative and tried to do things on the racetrack or with our race team that hasn’t been seen before.”
One such thing he did was the Project 91 program. NASCAR gained a standout road course ace in Shane van Gisbergen thanks to the initiative. NASCAR is not what it was in the 1970s and Marks has had an important role to play in that transition.
