A pit crew loading a car at the NASCAR Michigan International Speedway, 44th Annual Pure Michigan 400, August 16, 2013.
(2 of 5)
There are powerful team owners like Rick Hendrick, a billionaire auto dealer; star drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr.; TV-rights holders Fox and NBC; sponsors including 3M and Mars Inc., as well as General Motors, Ford and Toyota. (Chrysler pulled its Dodge cars last year; it isn't planning a return.) "It looks like we still have a very stable business model," says France, alluding to NASCAR's $820 million in estimated annual revenue--much of which is secured through television deals.
And yet France has put the entire business under review. New cars this year, dubbed Gen-6, are intended to restore the paint-trading, side-by-side racing that marked NASCAR's peak and at the same time more closely resemble cars in the showroom. Racetracks like Daytona are being downsized and retrofitted with plusher accommodations. Most important, under the so-called NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, the sport is nurturing a multicultural group of charismatic drivers like Darrell Wallace Jr., who it hopes can become its Tiger Woods or Jeremy Lin.
To woo Latinos, NASCAR co-produced the telenovela Arranque De Pasión, featuring stock-car drivers, with Univision in April. (The show, which chronicles the rise of an iron-willed female driver, Ela, features plenty of longing looks across the raceway.) "It's important for us to meet [Hispanic viewers] where they are," says NASCAR marketing boss Steve Phelps. "To create programs that will make them feel welcome."
But retooling NASCAR is not going to be easy. Consider the 10-race Chase for the Cup championship series, now under way, which was marred when crew chiefs for Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) were caught ordering two drivers to tank a race to help a third. NASCAR fined MWR heavily, and driver Martin Truex got tossed. NAPA Auto Parts also withdrew its $15 million sponsorship of the team. For a sport determined to make its races more exciting and competitive, having guys being told to take a dive doesn't help.
Then there's the difficulty of recalibrating NASCAR's image. Last spring, Smith's Speedway sold the naming rights for the Texas 500 to the national gun lobby, and the race was rebranded as the NRA 500. In the aftermath of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., it looked to some as if NASCAR was choosing sides, even though earlier in the year it sponsored a car that honored the tragedy's victims. In the controversy's aftermath, France said NASCAR might bar such politically charged sponsorships in the future. But overnight, the sport was dragged into a polarizing political fight at a time when it was trying to reach out to a broader fan base.
Driving Diversity
There were no African-American drivers in the Daytona 500, NASCAR's biggest race. Nor are there any in the top-tier Sprint Cup series of 36 races. Meanwhile, the best known Latino driver, Juan Pablo Montoya, is leaving the sport and returning to Indy car racing next year. (Indy racing is NASCAR's high-tech, open-cockpit rival.) When NASCAR invited rapper 50 Cent to the Daytona 500 in February, he looked around the track and tweeted, "Damn I don't see no black people here lol." He later deleted the message.