I think my proudest came in 1967 when Gurney and AJ Foyt took victory at Le Mans with American Ford iron. I was reading all about this in Road & Track and other publications, and I was awestruck even at that young age to hear of an American team and car company beating the world. Le Mans remains my favorite race to this day and I look upon this great event as the Olympics of Motorsport. While I’m not the biggest Chevy fan, I am nonetheless very happy to see the Corvette compete so well at Le Mans and other sports car racing venues. Same goes for the Dodge Viper when it was blowing the doors off exotic European makes.

My point in going through all this is that as Americans, we shouldn’t be afraid to take on the world in any sport, least of all racing. The Women’s US Soccer team has shown that we can compete with anyone at any level in anything, given the determination and will to win. I’m angry at Goodyear for not keeping up with the state of the art in design and manufacturing (As Gordon Kirby has discussed in recent past) and getting their butts handed to them by other tire makers; but instead of retooling, redesigning, and getting motivated to take back their previous role as top tire maker, they have instead shriveled up and gone back to Akron, Ohio with their tail between their legs, forced to make an exclusive contract with NASCAR to retain a high profile in motor sports. Goodyear should have come out fighting, but instead can only compete using a stacked deck. This attitude is not only with the public, but also in the mainstream media. Whereas the media decades ago had an even handed treatment about Motor sports (thank you, the late, great, Roone Arledge of ABC), now we barely get the same respect that lacrosse gets. Back in 1973, Sports Illustrated selected 1973 F1 Champ Jackie Stewart as its Man of The Year; I don’t think SI has done that much on F1 over the years until Lewis Hamilton came along.

As I said, I do love NASCAR, but we as a nation must show much the same national pride in our motorsports athletes as the Europeans, Japanese, Brazillians, Australians, and even Canadiens do. We need to look upon that competition as a challange. We do send our drivers to the ROC event overseas, and we won at least once, but hardly anyone here knows or cares. Once the USA realizes that it can’t dominate everything and must function as a part of the world community, then hopefully our attitudes about world competition such as soccer and racing will change as well, which will give us a lot more great moments like 1961, 1967, and 1978.

We did it before, and we can do it again.

I also do agree with Don Capps that while I don’t like the NASCAR organization, I do enjoy some of the racing, and many of the drivers and crew.

But my favorite series here are surely the ALMS with the IndyCar series really doing a lot to win me back as well.

I ended up in South Carolina when my Dad retired and we returned to America — the mythical Land of the Round Doorknobs. Although I continued to follow GP and sports car racing (making the trek to Watkins Glen in 1961 for the first of many times), I took to stock car racing like a duck to water. Ditto for the USAC Champ Cars.

Some years ago, about the middle of the Eighties, I wrote off formula one for any number of reasons. My attention turned almost exclusively to the American scene, the European scene I had followed for years seeming to be, well, dull and not very intersting. With CART, IMSA, and NASCAR all going great guns at the time, the Seventies and Eighties, I think many of us were in hog heaven.

Today, IndyCar is trying to salvage the remains of a mutual suicide pact. ALMS and Grand Am are trying to exist by contesting for a fanbase that most minor league baseball teams would be embarrassed by. Whatever it was that CART and IMSA once had that excited people is long gone. Outside of the annual 500-miler at the IMS, IndyCar rarely raises an eyebrow; and while the spirit of IMSA might still exist, well, why are there two weak organizations? I like them both, but….

Which brings me to NASCAR. While I might try to watch an IndyCar race, I often either forget or can’t remember which network it is on. Even if I generally watch NASCAR out of habit, I still watch it and stay rather well informed about its activities.

Never confuse enjoying the racing NASCAR provides with liking NASCAR the organization. I like the former, but often despair over the later. This dates back back to the Sixties & Seventies when I literally followed the Grand National circuit as well as watched lots of Sportsman races in the Southeast. However, NASCAR has managed to do what none of the other member of the sports niche that motor racing occupies in America — make itself known.

NASCAR has always known what business it was in — providing entertainment. That so many in motor racing continue to deny this blinding flash of the obvious would be funny if it were not for the fact that they really don’t get it. What NASCAR does marketing-wise pales beside what professional football (I include the colleges in this category along with the NFL since the former is truly professional, being literally the farm teams for the NFL) marketing machine does year-in and year-out. Remember when every time you turned around someone seemed to be wearing a Bulls hat? That was the NBA marketing machine in action.

While most here can moan and bitch about NASCAR being the focus of American racers rather than formula one, keep in mind that to most Americans NASCAR Cup raccing IS the American “formula one,” the pinnacle of the racing pyramid.

That America and “international” — code for European — racing have once more drifted so far apart is not what I would have liked, but given the direction taken by the FIA some decades ago, it is scarcely surprising. I point this out because so much, if not all, the finger-pointing and tsk-tsking has been point in the direction of America, as if there were not factors in Europe which also influenced this.

Additionally, NASCAR’s fans have a negative stereotype about them, the “Ricky Bobby” image, which whitewashes many people’s vision of all motorsport.

Both issues are difficult to overcome, especially considering Tony George’s seeming inability to market his product.

It’s worse for F1, a sport which traditionally feels it just needs to show up to dominate a market. In many ways it faces the same issues as soccer in America, the perception that it is an elitist sport played and run by Europeans, who are all “Frenchmen” and “Communists.”

I think NASCAR has a lot to learn from its little brother GA about keeping it real and keeping it relevant. I hope the controlled diversity of GA is the future in the whole France empire, not the stultifying uniformity of the two CoTs. There’s too much dull one-make racing on this side of the Atlantic, let’s not let the USA fall victim to the same thing ;)

Messrs. Ecclestone and George have discovered that the “build it and they will come” mantra is not really true in America. It takes more than that to attract a crowd (blood usually helps and a pop-tart socialite in rehab isn’t bad either). Not even Max Mosley’s tawdry actions with Woman #5, whips, bleeding bums and tea made it to any real mainstream media for very long. What does it take to get our attention!

Well, I am an avid F1 fan but I must say that I think the ALMS series is really starting to do things correctly. I know their viewership is not large but they have been steadily growing and attracting great talent and Manufacturer’s to the sport. The interest is starting to hit the radar screen with Chevrolet battling the Aston’s and the Audi domination being challenged by the Captain and his Porsche’s in a completely different class.

NASCAR, for all its glory, has become contrived and F1’s elitist nature doesn’t sit well with many but ALMS is humble, real racing that involves men and women who love one thing…racing. No Michelin tire debacle, industrial espionage scandals, Spanking scandal and no free-passes to those who have dragged the F1 moniker through the mud. No, just simple beautiful racing in all its complexities. Not contrived or staged, just running for running sake and the right to say we came, we ran and we won. Thank you Don Panoz. Let’s hope that we Americans don’t find a way to ruin this.

Can you blame them?

All boils down to money – salaries, sponsorship, prizes.

And as far as TV goes, NASCAR is WWE wrestling with wheels – easily identifiable good and bad guys, a spectacular, gladiatorial sport. By comparison IRL, Grand Am and ALMS are five-day Test cricket – a relatively refined form of entertainment that needs time and background understanding to appreciate.

NASCAR wasn’t made for TV, but it was very easily packaged for it.

It’d be nice if Scott Speed were to get a good offer in the IRL rather than being primed for climbing the NASCAR ladder.