NASCAR has seen the dynamics of its fan base change massively over the past two decades. Being a sport built on the power of star drivers, it lost much of its attraction when drivers like Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, and Jeff Gordon retired. Kyle Busch put this transition in the best words in an interview earlier this year.
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He noted how the fans of popular drivers from the 90s did not continue following the sport into its modern era to explain, “Our world now, today, of 2024, is a lot different from the fan base that’s following along. I don’t feel like we were able to transition a lot of the fans that were fans of those drivers into a William Byron fan, into a Kyle fan or whoever.”
The 2X Cup Series champion contended that star power is what brings people to the race track and that no driver in recent times has held as much influence as the yesteryear heroes did. This can be attributed largely to NASCAR’s intention of bringing parity to the sport. First, the Next Gen car is nearly identical across the field and gives little space for teams to build on under the hood.
This limitation restricts drivers and teams from topping one another on a regular basis. Notably, Busch (2015 and 2019) and Joey Logano (2018 and 2022) are the only two active drivers to have multiple championships in the last ten years. Second, even if a driver is good enough to win 35 races in a season, he could end up without a championship should he not make it into the Championship 4.
The way the sport’s structure is now, the work of a year could come undone in a single race day. These and more changes on the same lines have been integrated into the traditional NASCAR model. While it wouldn’t be prudent to say that they’re solely the reason for the older generation not following the sport now, it most certainly is an undeniable factor.
As things stand, NASCAR is building back its momentum to reach new corners and expand its global reach. Will it be able to get millions of people tuning into their TVs to watch their beloved stars dominate races? Probably not. But that little means that the immense popularity cannot be achieved for reasons other than just star power.
