A pit crew loading a car at the NASCAR Michigan International Speedway, 44th Annual Pure Michigan 400, August 16, 2013.
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"I've never had a boring race," says Tony Stewart, the star driver nicknamed Smoke for his skill behind the wheel. We're standing inside his No. 14 car hauler at Pocono Raceway two days before the GoBowling.com 400. Stewart's perspective is a little different from most NASCAR fans in that he spends Sundays going about 200 m.p.h., making the occasional left turn. He has driven everything from Indy cars to dirt-track karts (he broke his leg driving one a few days after he spoke to TIME, ending his season) and has won NASCAR's championship twice. "It's not boring if you are sitting in the seat," he says.
Stewart, 42, is also NASCAR's resident iconoclast, almost gleefully challenging accepted wisdom, which in this case is that NASCAR's races aren't attracting younger audiences because they've lost their edge. And if you stand along the pit road and watch race cars flash by in a rush of noise and color, you'd have to agree with him. It's a thrilling experience--at first. Watching lap after lap after lap, with very little happening between the competitors, you come to understand the issue.
The complaint is that the dangerous, bad-boy style of hotfooting that marked NASCAR's ascendency and made great story lines out of drivers like Stewart, Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski has devolved into corporate-billboard racing. Indeed, a few dominant teams win the vast majority of the races. Three teams have won 70% of those held this year, for example. There are 43 drivers who start each race, but half of them don't have a prayer. They can't match the money that a billionaire team owner like Hendrick can spend on technology, testing and personnel. At a late September Chase race in Dover, Del., Hendrick's cars finished 1-2-3. The race was won by the No. 48 car driven by Jimmie Johnson, who has claimed five championships in seven years for Hendrick Motorsports.
For years, NASCAR has tried to create a car that is both safe to run and exciting to watch while facing the paradox that some fans like the crashes that come with tight racing. After the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001, the sport poured money into safety, finally producing what it called the Car of Tomorrow (COT) in 2007. The COT was undeniably safer. But as a race car, the bigger, boxier vehicle created a lot of turbulence in its wake. It might as well have been dubbed a DOG--it was like turning a Corvette into a minivan, or so the fans' lament went.
The new Gen-6 car is even safer, but to some extent, the technology has overtaken the drivers. The aerodynamics of the three models available to teams are so similar--and so sensitive--that maneuvering them is difficult. "As the technology gets more involved, it's tighter and tighter. It's hard to get an advantage," Stewart explains. After her Daytona run, Patrick bemoaned her inability to pass: "I was thinking in the car: how am I going to do this? I didn't know what to do exactly." The results were apparent at a recent race in Indianapolis, which was harshly criticized as a single-file parade.