When Did NASCAR Races Become Less Exciting?

When I first started writing this blog entry, I hesitated because I didn't want to say anything bad about NASCAR. I really do love NASCAR. It would be like badmouthing a really good friend.

But then I listened to Joe Castello's WFO Radio broadcast from Monday, in which he asked why NASCAR isn't covered like other sports. Why doesn't the media point out the negative (which in Joe's case was Tony Stewart missing his pit stall toward the end of the race)? I don't know that I have the answer to Joe's question, but he did give me courage to pose this question: when did NASCAR races become less exciting?

The points race has been very exciting this season.  But what about each individual race that makes up the season and the Chase itself? If a non-race fan was tuning in to see what NASCAR is all about, would these races make a good case for the sport? There was a time that you couldn't walk away from the television because you never knew what was going to happen. Now I can take a quick half hour nap and I won't have missed a thing.

Here are five things I've noticed:

Fuel mileage is not that exciting. Non-race fans always say, "But it's just a bunch of cars going around in a circle." And my response is always that there is more to it and that there is a lot of strategy going on too. But that strategy is only so exciting. At the end of a race, I would much rather see two cars in a close battle for the lead, rather than one car completely checked out on the field trying to save gas.

No one crashes. Have the drivers gotten better? Is it the new car? Whatever it is, the number of crashes have declined significantly. I'm not advocating for torn-up cars, but no crashes mean fewer cautions. Fewer cautions mean longer green-flag runs. Longer green-flag runs mean more z's. It's bad when fans are praying for a debris caution.

There are no real rivalries. Seems like there are no real rivalries in NASCAR. There was the Edwards-Keselowski feud for a while (and rightfully so), but that seems to have died down for the most part (except for a little issue about restarts at Kansas this week). We had Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch for a new weeks this summer, but they kissed and made up by Chicagoland. Multi-car teams deter rivalries because it wouldn't look so good to have a public dispute with your "teammate." Also, does no one want to be the bad guy anymore?

There are too many 1.5-mile tracks. When NASCAR really started to grow in the 1990s and 2000s, the trend was to build 1.5 mile tracks. Brad Daugherty pointed out on the Kansas broadcast that one-third of all NASCAR races are on 1.5 mile tracks. Im my mind, it's the superspeedways, short tracks, and road courses that bring the most excitement.

Technology really does change everything. Technology created safer cars, protecting the drivers from injury. Technology has also created more reliable cars, so there are fewer failures. Jeff Gordon's engine failure this past weekend was the first one I can remember in a long time. Better brakes means fewer worries at short tracks.

So what's the solution? It's yet to be seen what effect, if any, the new fuel injection will have. Maybe shorter races are the answer. Or 50-lap dashes and the Twin 275 format that Indy used at Texas. We could learn a lot from the All-Star Race, the Daytona Duels, and the Bud Shootout.

All I know is that sometimes you need to pull a good friend aside to clue them in when things aren't going quite right.