NASCAR has lost that close sense of 'family,' and it needs to get it back

  
NASCAR's Brian France: Crisply professional, polished and well-spoken...but too cool and formal. He needs to revive that sense of 'the NASCAR family' (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  
  

  By Mike Mulhern
  mikemulhern.net

  DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.
  Okay, Brian France, NASCAR's big guy, did a good job with Friday's press briefing, taking questions on any subject, spending a good 30-minutes-plus, laying out his case on a number of topics.
   A very nice presentation. Very much in command. Solid talking points.
   Classically crisp and professional.
   And he's done this a number of times during his run as boss of the sport his grandfather founded.
   But still there's been something missing.
   Not just from the third-generation France, with all these rather much too formal press conferences, but from the NASCAR brass in general.
   And this, the mid-point of the season, might be just the moment to point this out, for consideration.
   NASCAR, over the years, as Richard Petty reminisced the other day (this is the 25th anniversary of his dramatic duel with Cale Yarborough, in front of the President of the United States), has long been about 'family.'
  

  

  
Richard Petty, for years, has been NASCAR's best ambassador (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   Petty pointed to the time when he was coming up with David Pearson and Cale Yarborough and the Allisons that drivers and crews understand the 'family' and the fans' part of it all.
    "I just grew up in it, and didn't really pay much attention to it -- It's just a part of Richard Petty's life," Petty drawled. "And if you go out to eat, and somebody comes up and wants an autograph, you either sign it, or if you've got stuff all over your hands you tell 'em 'when I get through here I'll come out and take a picture.'
   "It's just part of my being, I guess. You just go along with it."
   Fans have been part of this family. Drivers, crewmen, team owners, NASCAR officials….it's all been 'family.'
   But the last few years this sport has lost that.
   It has become much bigger, yes, a much bigger business…but at the same time much too corporate.
   This sport has lost that folksiness.
   There is no longer much sense of family.
   Maybe that died when they buried Bill France Jr. a few years back.
   Bill Jr., with his gruff but folksy approach to people and the sport, epitomized – along with Petty and Junior Johnson and the Woods and Bud Moore and Dale Earnhardt and Richard Childress – the 'NASCAR family.'
  
  

  
Bill France Jr. (R), getting the reins to the sport from his father Big Bill Sr. (Photo: NASCAR)

  
Mike Helton, the NASCAR president, has been all but missing in the garage lately, and when he's around, it's more an imperial presidency at work. Helton used to be, well, almost one of the guys; his forte was working the garage, keeping in touch with the men under his command, available to questions and answers and suggestions. But he seems more isolated than ever.
   Yes, all these guys have a lot on their plates, with the struggling U.S. economy, the angst in Detroit, sluggish TV ratings, and the noticeable loss of regular media covering the sport and generating local enthusiasm at venues around the country. The big TV networks and AP can cover the sport, but they can't provide the local angles that give this sport the color it needs to make it personal to the average fan.
   What we're all missing here is the 'family' folksiness, the sense of camaraderie of sports soldiers in battle. That was what the late Bill France Jr. brought to the game.
   Yes, when it was time to crunch, Bill Jr. could be a steamroller.
   But one thing missing from the sport today, and the past few years, is that Billy Jr. touch – on race days, nearly every weekend, he'd pull up a chair out back of the NASCAR hauler and welcome any and all in the garage to come say hi, take a poke a him, complain, compliment, question. All in a familial manner. He was the boss, yes. And he'd chew you out if he felt you needed it. But he'd also offer fatherly advice, brotherly advice, patriarchal advice….
   Bill France Jr. understood this sport better than just about anyone who's come down the pike…except maybe Petty himself and crew chief Dale Inman.
   However Bill France Jr. was as much a 'presence' as a boss. He was more than just a general coming in to address the troops in the field.
  And he was almost always here….ready to take your best shot, and offer a few good ones of his own. With a pat on the back.
  NASCAR needs to figure out how to regain that sense of family.

  
Bill France Jr. and his daughter Lesa France Kennedy, in the early 1980s (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)