The 2005 Dodge Charger is the new dog on the block. It’s homely looking to say the least and looks nothing like it’s street version. How successful will it be ? The nose design looks like it’ll give the car more down force, which is something the Monte Carlo has had an advantage on. There’s supposedly a new engine to go with it. Will they be able to run the new engine or will NA put the kibosh on it like they did when Dodge first came back to Cup racing ? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens in testing before we hear some screaming about “we’re at an aero disadvantage” like we heard several years ago when the new Monte Carlo came out and hadn’t even made one lap on the track.

Kevin Triplett bailed out of his marketing position with NA to run for public office. He didn’t succeed. Now he’s with a marketing company. Now we have Brett Yormark, the VP of Marketing jumping ship. Could there be a reason ? Let’s look at the big marketing failures over the last year. NA bought a lot of land in Marysville Oregon only to have the local residents tell NA what they could do with their track. NA, through various corporate fronts, bought a toxic waste site in New York only to have various local politicians and the Mayor come out and say they’re against having a track there. NA laid out a lot of money to buy up all that land only to be told they’re not wanted. Good move by your marketing and research folks there boys. Guess they didn’t do enough research in the test marketing, polls, and surveys. And shutting down the streets of New York so you could drive some cars around didn’t endear you to any of the natives there either. Traffic there is bad enough on a normal day and you shut down streets during the week ? Smooth move Ex-Lax.

The changes in the Cup sponsor and the racing format has bitten them in the @ss with a decrease in attendance. There were a lot of empty seats at a lot of tracks last year showing the fans displeasure with the change in the format and the escalating ticket prices, not to mention the weekend ticket packages, which is the only way you can get season tickets at some tracks. The overall TV ratings weren’t as good as what NA wants people to believe. They were only up by 2% overall. 2% ? The way NA has carried on you’d think they’d have replaced the NFL as Number One. And there’s a big gap between the NFL’s ratings and NA’s. So dream on boys. Fan polls conducted before and after the season show that fans were resoundingly against the changes. But NA continues on undeterred in their efforts to turn a sport into nothing more than 3 hours of paid advertising.

The “winner” of the play-off format hasn’t shown any marketability. I can find a Tony Stewart t-shirt, pencil, and bobblehead doll, but I can’t find much on the “champ” and I went and looked at several different stores. When a big chain like Wal-Mart doesn’t carry it, you know something’s wrong. I checked sports memorabilia stores and they don’t have any demand for anything with the “champ” on it, so they don’t carry anything with his picture, name, or car on it. Who’s the three biggest sellers in the memorabilia and souvenir market? The Earnhardts and Jeff Gordon. So it looks like the big marketing machine in Daytona has really got a mess on their hands.

Another thing that is biting them is Toyota. There are a lot of race fans who see this sport as “All-American”. A sport born in America, with American drivers, driving American cars. Toyota is a Japanese company, period, end of story. By bringing in Toyota, fans who are traditionalists or have a memory of history or who are proud of being American have taken a step away from the sport because it’s no longer an “All American” sport.

Drivers, crewmembers, owners, and fans came out early and said what they thought about the change in the racing format. Not to be one to take criticism lightly, NA put the muzzle of the drivers, teams, and team owners.

Last season, the show “Pit Bull” asked a lot of embarrassing questions about the changes in the format and the leadership and how they were running things. Folks came out and said what was on their minds. NA got the show cancelled because they questioned the leadership and their decisions.

Wind Tunnel has been cut back to one day a week. Why ? They won’t say upfront, but since Dave Despain has been critical of NA’s decisions you can bet that pressure was brought to bear to shut him up. We can’t have any criticism of our “wonderful” leaders now can we ?

Respected journalist are criticizing NA for a variety of reasons. The lap dogs say things are peachy keen. They obviously need to take off their rose colored glasses and have a look around. The journalists who aren’t towing the party line are criticizing NA for the changes in the format, playing favorites, rules, turning the cars into things that are little more than IROC cars, and tossing out the history and traditions in favor of money. These journalists weren’t quite so critical with the previous regime running things. At least they had some sense of history, values, and tradition. But since all that has been tossed to the wayside, these folks are coming out and telling things like it is and NA can’t tame them.

Then you have the web based writers. You have some that are towing the party line and you have some that are against the changes and pretty much saying the same thing the paid journalists are saying and pretty much for the same reasons. NA can’t control the nay sayers. NA doesn’t own them. All they do is ignore them and hope they go away. You’ve also got the conspiracy folks who see a conspiracy about who wins, how they win, and that the races are fixed.

And you have the cute cartoons poking fun at drivers, fans, and crewmembers over things that happen during the race. Only one site has even taken a somewhat “editorial” look and come up with their own cartoons critical of NA and their faux pas.

But try as NA may, various drivers, team owners, and team members have come out and said what they thought based on the guarantee of anonyminity and they’re not happy.

What does the future hold ? We’ll have the cars being clones of the IROC cars. We’ll have a bigger input from the sponsors, TV, media, and NA to “make things more exciting”. Read that as more advertising. More Japanese companies will enter the arena, like Honda and Nissan. The sport will no longer be a sport. It’ll be 3 hours of infomercials on wheels. Fans will leave because of the Japanese invasion. Others will leave because they’re sick of the advertising and promotion gimmicks being used. Other fans will leave because they plain and simply can’t afford the escalating ticket prices. Unless things take a major turn for the better, stock car racing will be something you’ll only find in ARCA, Hooter’s Pro Cup, and your local tracks.