Back in the day when NASCAR was at its peak of popularity, its biggest selling point to the general public, the fans, was the personalities it had, the drivers. Fans saw names such as Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, and many more then. But that level of personality is missing today, as is that level of racing. So it can be argued that NASCAR could do with promoting its product as well as its personalities.
Advertisement
This was something that Steve Phelps, the current president of NASCAR, also put forward for the teams.
“We need to do our job as the sanctioning body and the tracks that we don’t own and that we do own, need to do their part in promoting NASCAR and the races themselves to get more and more sellouts,” Phelps said as per Speed Sport recently. “The race teams need to do their part in helping to promote the sport in addition to what they do today. If you look at the makeup of the race teams, it’s primarily to make sure they are building fast race cars and having the right crews at the racetrack in order to win.”
“That is what their goal is, and that’s what it should be.”
NASCAR teams better understand the stars of their show
Right now, there aren’t many names that come to mind around the question of which current NASCAR driver has the most marketable personality. Sure there’s Denny Hamlin. But he isn’t getting any younger. Sure, there was the boom of Ross Chastain in 2022, but it died down in 2023 for unknown reasons. Other than that, there really isn’t a driver today who can capture the attention of the entire country just as Earnhardt or Gordon once did. It’s not Chase Elliott, it’s not Bubba Wallace, and it’s not Joey Logano either.
But it may not be a problem with a lack of personalities in the sport. Instead, it could be a lack of promotion of those personalities, which Steve Phelps also touched on, pointing out how the majority of teams are focused on the competition side of the sport, claiming that they’re not that turned on to the marketing and promotion sides of the business.
He said, “I’m not suggesting that they need to do that, but what can we do collectively with our race teams that drive the growth of this sport?”
And even more important than that, Phelps noted, was the question of what they can do with the drivers. Because at the end of the day, in NASCAR, “the drivers are the show,” which sooner the teams understand, the better it’ll be for them, the drivers, and overall, the sport.
