Richard Petty Exposes the Reason for Drop in NASCAR’s “Prestige”

Ex-NASCAR Cup Series champion Richard Petty has shared his thoughts on how too many winners having is hurting the sport.

Richard Petty Exposes the Reason for Drop in NASCAR’s “Prestige”

Richard Petty (Via IMAGO)

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The NASCAR Cup Series has found itself in a tough position in terms of fame and cultural relevance. Though there has been positive growth, the rate isn’t close enough to what everyone in the community expects and is far away from the glory days. Seven times Cup Series champion Richard Petty seems to know exactly what is wrong.

In a recent interview, Richard Petty declared that sport lacks leaders among the drivers. Since the introduction of the Next-Gen cars, the sports have become more competitive than ever, with this season featuring 14 different race winners, with Denny Hamlin and Shane van Gisbergen being the winningest with four wins their name.

In the past, the wins were as wide spread within the garage and the likes of Petty, Dale Sr and more used to dominate the races, winning almost all of them. This makes a situation where the fans don’t have that one driver they can follow everywhere. The only name came close to this is Kyle Larson, who won 10 races in his 2021 championship season, but he hasn’t been able to produce on the same level since.

Right now, there’s too big of a crowd. We’ve got no leaders. We’ve had, what, 15 different winners this year? That does not create a following. No matter what happens, you need a fox out front. We don’t have any leader — whether he’s good, bad or indifferent.

Richard Petty told Jeff Gluck of The Athletic.

The 200 times Cup race winner pointed out that drivers used to get both love and hate, as well as really good nicknames when the wins large number of racers. Fans came to the tracks hoping to either see then win or get humbled. This facts has taken some prestige away from the sports and it hurting the series’ popularity.

When Darrell was winning a bunch of races, they’d call him ‘Jaws’ and people would come to see him either win or get beat. Same with Earnhardt: You wanted to see him win a race, or you wanted to see somebody beat him. Right now, we don’t have that. So, I think it takes a little prestige away from what we’re doing.

Richard Petty added.

Richard Petty backs Mark Martin calls scrapping playoffs

One of the biggest conversations in the racing community at the moment is need to scrap playoff and bring back full-season points format like the old day. Hall of Famer Mark Martin has been the biggest advocate of it and Petty is backing the legend. He believes some of the changes made over the years seriously isn’t good for the sport.

Mark Martin
Mark Martin (Via IMAGO)

OK, I’m still from the old school. I’m with Martin, that they start races in February and you run all year to November and it’s, ‘OK, who was the best that year?’ They should be champion. When they give points for leading different [stages] in the race and they give points for all this other stuff, that’s a bunch of crap, OK?

Richard Petty said.

While he understands NASCAR is trying to modernize the sport by introducing new ideas, things need to be different as what they have been doing so far hasn’t delivered. It would be interesting to see how everything is going to change in the sport in the upcoming years, with calls for changes intensifying.

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