Daytona International
Speedway announced yesterday that as part of a record purse of more than $19
million, the track will pay a $200,000 bonus to the driver who leads lap 100 –
the halfway lap -- in this month’s season-opening Daytona 500.
“There is plenty of incentive for drivers to run up front the entire race,
but even more so at the halfway point and the last lap of the Daytona 500,” said
DIS President Joie Chitwood in a news release announcing the program.” The
good news is that the fine folks in Daytona Beach are trying. They’re promoting
the heck out of the “Great American Race,” adding what they consider to be
spice to the soup, rather than simply clasping their hands and praying for a
sold-out grandstand.
Unfortunately, our friends
at DIS have bought into the erroneous belief that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing
is… well, boring. They’ve begun pandering to a group of race fans demanding
that something – anything –
bring them to their feet in a screaming fit of euphoric bliss, every minute of every
day.
As a whole, our society has been
decimated by a mass outbreak of Attention Deficit Disorder. We fast-forward through
movies, skipping past those pesky plot points in order to determine “Who Done
It” and move on to whatever comes next. We heat our pre-packaged meals in a
microwave oven, eating them over the sink because cooking and washing dishes
take too long. We eschew old-fashioned conversation in favor of Twitter,
dumbing our thoughts down to 140 characters or less in the interest of time.
NASCAR Nation has been
particularly hard-hit by this epidemic. Our demand for constant stimulation has
become so overwhelming that for many, the Daytona 500 is no longer good enough.
Our insistence on instant gratification has rendered us incapable of enjoying
the action, strategy and competitiveness of a full, 500-mile race. Incapable of
waiting for the actual finish, we now demand a “Halfway Bonus” to spice-up the
middle stages of the race and make our favorite driver risk it all for our
entertainment pleasure, every single lap.
Last year, Talladega
Superspeedway attempted a similar ploy, offering a $100,000 bonus to the driver
who created the 100th lead change in October’s Good Sam Club 500. The track’s previous race had produced a record
88 lead changes, breaking the previous mark of 87 set just one race earlier. Track
President Grant Lynch – like Daytona’s Chitwood – bought into the “bonus money makes
drivers try harder” premise, anteing up a six-figure bonus that resulted in reams
of pre-race publicity, but few results on race day.
Talladega’s $100,000 bonus went
unclaimed last fall, despite a highly competitive event that tallied 72 lead
changes. Why weren’t the drivers beating their brains out trying to run-up the
number of lead changes? And more importantly, why did drivers like Jimmie
Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Carl Edwards – all of whom had very fast cars
and would have been prime contenders to claim that $100,000 bonus – never go to
the front until the very end of the race?
The answer is simple.
Because no matter how we try, we cannot make the middle matter.
It’s the Daytona 500, not
the Daytona 250. This is big-time professional stock car racing, not Youth
League soccer, where no score is kept and everyone gets a popsicle after the
game. NASCAR races are marathon events, not sprints, and fans incapable of
understanding the difference deserve education, not pandering.
If we are no longer capable
of enjoying a full, 500-mile event the way our fathers and grandfathers did, maybe
it’s time to simply admit defeat. Let’s pull the plug on live, flag-to-flag TV
coverage, since people say they’re sleeping through the middle 300 miles
anyway. Let’s revert back to the “Good Old Days” when the race was delivered in
an easy-to-digest, 30-minute highlight package a week after it took place;
showcasing the start, a couple of wrecks and the final 10 laps.
That way, we’ll have more
time to devote to the non-stop excitement of our VideoStation 3, where someone’s
head is exploding at all times.
