Christopher Bell claims NASCAR has an “identity crisis”
Joe Gibbs Racing star driver Christopher Bell has some bold statement about the balance between racing and entertainment in the sport.
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Christopher Bell (Via IMAGO)
NASCAR is the premier stock car racing championship in the world and over the years it has produced some of the best motorsports athletes ever. But its evolution into the billion-dollar worth industry it is now didn’t came just because of the racing aspect, as just like every other sport league in the world it thrives being a source of entertainment.
As the years have passed the entertainment aspect has often overshadowed decision making, forcing NASCAR to make calls that hurt the pure racing aspect of the sport. According to Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell, this choices over the years has now put the sport is a situation where it has an identity crisis as they are now finding it hard to balance between entertainment and racing.
He feels that there is this identity crisis, an idea which he came across in the last few years and he admitted in The Teardown podcast of Jordan Bianchi and Jeff Gluck believes its 100% true. Bell pointed out that within the sport there is this debate over whether its promoting the best team and driver or the entertainment side of the business.
I don’t know, I mean, it just uh… It feels like we in a little bit of an identity crisis, and I can’t [take credit], someone else in our industry used that term, and I loved it and I’m like, that is so true. Are we a racing league and do we want to promote the best teams, the best drivers? Or do we want to be in the entertainment industry and have the most entertaining races?Christopher Bell said via The Teardown podcast.
Christopher Bell admits having both is not possible
The JGR driver was reminded by the co-host of the podcast Gluck that it is impossible to have both at the same time. Bell admitted that that is a fact and admitted that point of view of casual fans and the point of view of motorsports insider will differ. He admitted that this puts the sport the sport in a weird spot all together. He later explained that all of his asserting came from the increase in wildcard races in the playoffs.
It is, and if you ask different people on what a good race is, you’re gonna get different answers. And you have true motorsports people that understand what a good race is and how the best, or however a race should be. And you ask other fans who are as educated in the sport and their view of it is going to be much different. So, yeah we’re in a weird spot right now. And it’s just going to get weirder with Talladega in the Round of 8.Christopher Bell said.
The points made by Bell from a pure racing fan perspective make a lot of sense. At the meantime there are lot of arguments in favor NASCAR in their effort to make it more entertaining as at the end of the day the success of the sport is determined by market forces. At the end of the day racing is part of the entertainment industry and it does have to make some changes that may deviate from its roots in desperate times.
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Justin P Joy
(4859 Articles Published)