The evolution of motorsports had always been predicated upon the ingenuity and creativity of unassuming individuals, who, without the benefit of unlimited expense accounts, found through trial and error and practiced over many years, a way of making their machine more competitive than those of their peers. The cars they drove looked like the ones for sale at the dealership down the street and the drivers seemed like they could be a part of your family. They didn’t come to town in million dollar rigs because all they needed was a pickup and a dual axle trailer.

Over time, racing innovation, fame and fortune became the province of moneyed corporations who utilized their capital for technologies that would make a NASA engineer proud, slowly resulting in the exclusion of the archetypal innovators who found that they were suddenly unable to be competitive in the sport that they had created and nurtured. The ties that had first bound them to the racing they lived and loved had become frayed and they eventually took their rightful seat in the back of the bus, relics of a past that had become merely poignant and mostly irrelevant.

The effect of all this resulted in a "distancing" whereby the competitors and the fans found themselves separated more than ever from one another by fences, money and a philosophy that promoted the fame of a driver above a recognition of those who bestowed it upon him in the first place.

Even baseball has been affected by this trend where it’s become commonplace to see spectators using binoculars to follow the action on the playing field. What happened to intimate ball parks like Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, where home plate was so close to your seat that you could almost experience, first hand, what it was like to be at bat? What happened at the racetracks? The drivers and the sanctioning bodies who recognized the importance of making sure that their paying customers got their money’s worth each and every time they passed through a turnstile? The answer depends upon who you ask but most would agree, if they were honest about it, that their real success was assured not through lucrative TV contracts but through a strong fan base that felt like they were a part of the show.

It’s evident that technology is here to stay and it wouldn’t be fair to
say that a great deal hasn’t been realized in terms of safety and
efficiency but there’s a concern that transcends these gains and it has all to do with the "fan experience". Racing, in many ways, has become a homogenized and pasteurized package. NHRA funny cars are all running identical chassis with hemi-based engines. The only difference is their bodies and the graphics. NASCAR has the "Car of Tomorrow" with a choice of four engines and different headlight decals. The drivers have become luminaries in every sense of the word with little time, or it seems, desire to mingle with the masses. Those days are long gone when a Richard Petty would sit on a k-wall and sign autographs until the last person in line got theirs as I saw him do in 1965.

This year the topography has changed as the result of drastic cutbacks in sponsorship which has caused the racing community to revaluate and reassess what they need to do in order to survive. Some teams have merged out of necessity, some have gone away and the concern remains that some that were funded for years at a time may not have the cash to campaign a car for the entire season. Racing facilities are also concerned about whether they will have enough butts in the seats and so on and so on. Reduced ticket prices help but there’s a need and a desire for fans to experience something that you can’t attach a dollar sign to. They want memories and excitement on race day that amounts to more than the sum of its parts. They want autographs and a feeling that they count when they have an opportunity to actually speak to their hero instead of worshipping him from afar. Some point out that there are security concerns and yes, the people who put up the dollars expect their driver to be at their beckon and call but times have changed and a revamping is needed to bring these paying customers into the fold, hopefully before these races are held before empty grandstands and corporate suites.