NASCAR

Over the past several years, NASCAR has pretty much admitted that providing a venue for good racing has become secondary to providing entertainment for the masses, even those who don't know push from shove, or racing from hype.

Take for instance, all the hype placed on the pit crews. Their job is to replace worn tires, to top off the car with fuel, to tear plastic windshield covers off, to add little rubber wedges to suspension springs or to adjust suspension travel and loading. Occasionally they'll open the hood, but they always look bewildered when they do that, as if all those things are strange to them. Oh, yeah, they'll tape up open pieces of body and pound other pieces of body away from tires.

So what's the hype? NASCAR and their lackeys, the TV crews assigned to bring the excitement of racing into your living room, add the pit crews' performance into the mix and call it all "the racing experience."

Well, for the France family and the TV folks I want to say this. When I turn on the TV to watch a race, it's the competition on the track I want to see. I don't care about watching a bunch of pumped up mechanics trying to add 22 gallons of gasoline from huge gas cans they must carry themselves while about them scurry tire changers and one guy with a hand operated frame jack.

Still think the pit crew orgy isn't hype? When you go to a gas station, nobody comes out to your car with a can of gas on his shoulder. You, or on the Jersey Pike, an attendant, pumps gas directly into your car with a hose - much more efficient way of adding fuel to a car. When you go to the tire store to get four new tires, a guy doesn't run out to your car with a frame jack while tire handlers do their thing.

There are other forms of racing that have modernized the pit stop and I think NASCAR would be wise to learn from them. Fuel could easily be added from a hose and a jack could be built in to each car that would raise the car off the pavement at each pit stop. Finally, the use of five lug nuts on each wheel seems archaic when a single knock-off could be used.

But, you ask, how could racing be racing without the actions of the pit crew be included in the mix? A couple of simple changes to the rules would do it:
1. Pits would be open during green flag racing
2. Pits would be closed immediately when a caution or is called
3. Pits would remain closed until racing is resumed.
4. Relaxation of the rules to permit on-board jacks, knock-off wheels and modernized re-fueling methods.

As simple as this sounds, I don't expect NASCAR to contemplate adopting such a change because they are too enamored with the current process. NASCAR would rather appeal to the masses as an entertainment medium, thus overlooking the real fans who groan because a crash has interrupted racing in favor of those who watch purely for the spectacular crashes in the hopes they'll be able to tell how they saw driver Winston Gosofast get killed or maimed in his last race.

Farfetched? I'll bet more people can tell you about Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash at Daytona than can tell you who won the race or name the top five finishers.