The New NASCAR Season is Almost Here; Why Am I Not More Excited?

I have to keep reminding myself: the season is about to start. Yet when I start surfing online, my sports
“clicks” start with NCAA (as in college basketball), not NASCAR. I feel kind of guilty, but I doubt things are
likely to change.
When the Clash kicks off on February 4, I’ll probably be in the middle of something else, checking in
occasionally by computer or phone to see what’s happening. Daytona 500 weekend is my last weekend
before knee replacement surgery, so I’ll probably have far too much before-the-knife stuff on my plate
to even think about setting aside that much time for a race.

That’s not how it would have been a few decades ago, though. Back then, the schedule revolved around
being able to attend/watch/listen to “the race,” and the other activities were what had to
accommodate. Back then, it was an addiction; today, it’s something I have to struggle to remember.
How do you identify with NASCAR today when your “glory days” memory bank cranks up with Joe
Weatherly, David Pearson, and “independents” like J.T. Putney and Roy Tyner, then hits stride with the
Petty-Allison feud, the decision of whether or not to hate Darrell Waltrip, and the glory that was Dale
Earnhardt Sr. It starts to fade in proportion to the growth of NASCAR’s corporate ego, crashes with the
Car of Tomorrow, and watches the final embers die with the departures of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart,
and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Somewhere, deep down, a piece of me still says that things might change, but all the brain cells around
that aberrant one know those changes won’t happen, because they require the impossible: setting the
clock back. The money invested in the sport today blocks that totally.
Money. That’s the difference.
The NASCAR of my younger days didn’t have a whole lot of it. Most drivers had jobs other than racing
cars. Most owners, unless they owned a garage, were in it as a hobby. Most tracks, if they had a staff at
all besides $20-on-race-day folks, could fit them all in one office. NASCAR’s staff listing fit on two pages
of the race program, and it wasn’t just Daytona people; rather, it was every track’s flagman and chief
steward, plus all the other part-timers. I stopped by Daytona in the late 1960s and visited the
PR/marketing department. His name was Phil Holmer.

I could go on, but you see what I mean here. The lack of money made racing then what it was. To people
who like NASCAR 2024, the money makes it what it is: a bright, shiny spectacle with cars as evenly
matched as they can be made to be.
For last year’s spring race in Richmond – five days short of exactly 61 years after my first – 23 other cars
finished on the lead lap with winner Kyle Larson, and only one car of 37 total failed to finish. Joe
Weatherly won my first race by more than a lap over Net Jarrett; Worth McMillion was 23 laps behind in
10 th place, and only 11 of the 25 race starters were still around at the finish. The winner’s average speed
was 58.624 (on a half-mile dirt track), nearly 32-1/2 miles per hour slower than 2024 (on the three-
quarter-mile paved raceway).

It takes a rules package that governs everything you can imagine and some (a lot, actually) you can’t, to
achieve that parity, and it takes money. Nobody just buys and car and shows up anymore. Even former
boxing champ Floyd Mayweather, who’s worth more money than I can imagine, has struggled to bring
his Cup team to the track, for want of sponsorship.
On the Atlantic Rural Exposition fairgrounds dirt track in Richmond in April 1963, Ray Fox’s deal with
Holly Farms Chicken to sponsor Junior Johnson’s Chevy was a true sponsorship in today’s terms, albeit
for much less money. The factory Fords all carried the name of some car dealership, but it was hardly
the source of the team’s funding. Other cars carried the owner’s business, like Burton-Robinson
Construction Co. for Net Jarrett’s Ford, or the Burgundy Café in Washington, D.C., owned by the family
of Ratus Walters, for whom Larry Frank drove that day.

Once upon a time, a driver or owner could put together a last-minute deal with a local grocery store or
other business for race day, but spur-of-the-moment arrangements like that don’t happen with the
dollar amounts required today. (I still laugh at the memory of a Busch/Xfinity team member coming into
the Richmond media center 20-25 years ago and asking to use the photocopier and fax machine to send
the car owner a copy of the $10,000 check just received. Only with that proof of paid sponsorship would
the owner allow his car to run the race.)
All that money isn’t going away, at least not if the scores of people – from NASCAR vice presidents on
down – whose jobs would be affected having anything to say about it. That means “stock car racing” will
continue to fade into the distant past and the fading memories of those like me, who are no longer
NASCAR’s target audience.
But that’s OK. This weekend I will celebrate racing the way I like it, and it will be about as far from
NASCAR as you can get. The PA Sprint Car Series will hold its 2023 banquet (delayed three weeks by
weather) at the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing at Latimore Valley, between Harrisburg and
Gettysburg in South Central Pennsylvania.

The teams to be honored have no paid staff, and while most of them have multiple sponsors, those
sponsorships are worth far less than it would take to get your name on the side of a NASCAR touring
division car. Some teams are self-sponsored; one driver used to write down for his sponsor: “My wallet.”
One reason they can do that is that the frame for a sprint car is relatively inexpensive, and the engine for
a PASS/RaceSaver car costs only 20-25% of that for a 410 sprinter, the gold standard for these open-
wheeled machines.
To the uninitiated, the money the division is paid is a joke: $400 to win, normally. BUT, the key rule is
that the money is spread out, with last place receiving half as much as the winner. Lots of other
economy classes pay the winner more, but the guys finishing near the bottom get $50, $25, or even
nothing. The RaceSaver Sprints model (RaceSaver is the rules package developed nearly 30 years ago by
Virginian French Grimes) is intended to give as many teams as possible the means to keep racing, and it
is supposed to discourage trying to outspend everybody else in search of big paydays.
It seems to work. Last year nearly 110 teams attempted to run at least one PASS event. Some younger
drivers use it as a steppingstone to sprint car divisions with larger, more expensive engines, and some
return from those divisions when the bills start to outweigh the excitement. Other drivers find a
comfortable cost-benefit balance with RaceSaver. The points standings from 10 years ago show more
than a dozen drivers who are still expected to race again this year, and a handful of those have been
involved for 20 years of more.

So is the racing any good? My answer is yes, and more cars in a typical field have a shot at victory than in
NASCAR.
As my schedule for this year begins to take shape, PASS races at more-or-less local tracks (most within
two hours of home) are what’s being added, not NASCAR events. That’s because my golden age of
racing translates more to what PASS does today than NASCAR. I identify with its drivers and owners, and
having affordable tickets and concessions doesn’t hurt, either.
Now I know there are trade-offs here. PASS races aren’t on TV, unless we’re running as a support class
and the show is being carried on FLO or another streaming channel. The drivers aren’t household
names, although most do have t-shirts for sale. The big money also means big media, and that’s not part
of the PASS equation.
Money matters in other ways, too. Should NASCAR return to racing like it had half a century ago (and
like PASS has today), drivers wouldn’t make the money they make, and LOTS of people would be put out
of work. I don’t want anybody to lose a job, but I can’t support jobs that underpin a product that will
never return to the top of my fandom list. PASS also is run by volunteers (of which I am one), and while
finding new volunteers can be hard, we seem to be managing.

I can’t quite give up NASCAR completely, although there seems to be a spiral heading closer and closer
to that end. The less I pay attention, the less I know about the newer drivers, which makes it all less
interesting. The continued heavy-handed micro-managing of everything by Daytona doesn’t help.
(That’s another inevitability with having all those high-paid employees: When Big Bill France was all but
a solo act, he could micro-manage as much as those trying to follow in his footsteps.)
Since my interest really focuses on the past, most of my contributions in this space (PRT) for 2024 will
involve history. I’ll do my best to make as much of it as possible positive.
I hope you enjoy the upcoming season, and I strongly suggest you include some local racing in it. Stocks, modifieds, sprints, or something else; dirt tracks or paved, just do it. You should get good competition,
and if you pick a lemon, at least you won’t have dropped big bucks checking things out. Try to read up
on tracks online and find out what’s best at the concession stand. Talk with the folks around you.
If one of them’s a big old guy with a beard, limping a little like he’s had a recent right knee replacement,
say hello, and maybe we can have a good conversation. Happy Racing!

Frank Buhrman

Photo Credit (cover): 1970s Richmond shot is claimed by RacingOne and Getty Images in various online locations including PTR.