NASCAR will soon be at a crossroads, and Humpy Wheeler has an idea or two about what direction major league stock car racing should take in the coming decade.
The former Charlotte Motor Speedway promoter is a big picture visionary type that would concede that his ideas are often radical in nature. And his proposal over what NASCAR should do beginning in 2021, when the five-year sanctioning agreement between the sanctioning body and tracks concludes, is certainly ambitious.
First and foremost, Wheeler believes NASCAR is in the perfect position to be sold to an international conglomerate, like Formula 1 was back in 2016 when it was acquired by American-based Liberty Media.
“NASCAR and the tracks are in a perfect position to be sold,” Wheeler said on Wednesday at Eldora Speedway. “If you take SMI and ISC, throw them together with NASCAR and get Pocono and Dover to come into the fold, that’s going to be about a $20 billion deal.
“Which to buy a sport, that you get the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel, isn’t a lot of money when you think about the (Carolina Panthers) getting sold for 2.2 billion. So, that’s not a lot of money. So, someone is going to do this. It’s just the way of the world.”
So, what happens once NASCAR is sold? Wheeler says the ownership group will want to take stock car racing international. That doesn’t mean exhibition races in Asian markets or simply having the Euro Series, Mexico Series and Pinty’s Series.
Wheeler’s vision is essentially Formula 1 for Stock Cars — something called “NASCAR International” that features 15 domestic events and 15 on circuits across the globe.
“You know, we keep telling ourselves that Charlotte, Texas and Daytona are the greatest tracks in the world,” Wheeler said. “They’re not. If you go to Dubai or the new track in Malaysia, they have spent a ton of money on these tracks. And the road courses (NASCAR) puts on TV, they put on a really good show.
“So, you run 15 or so races in this country, and run the remainder of them overseas.”
Doing so, Wheeler argued would open Stock Car racing to additional manufacturers and sponsors that do business across the globe.
“There’s no such thing as an American car anymore,” Wheeler said. “General Motors gets up every day and they think about how many cars they can sell across the world and not just the USA.
“If you look at the general distribution of the automotive industry, it’s a global deal, so you would bring in Mercedes, BMW and a lot of new cars into this new type of Cup racing. Yes, you would get further away from the southern deal, just like basketball got way further away from CR, but that’s good and bad, and it’s just the way of the world. But the future of our sport is international.”
Wheeler cited recent expansion goals by both the NFL and MLB as reasons that NASCAR would want to follow suit, too.
“They want to get the kind of money that soccer and F1 races get,” he said. “So, I think this will have drivers from all over the world. Half the races will be road races, but on TV, those put on a good show. That’s what I think is going to happen.”
– Matt Weaver is an associate motorsports editor at Autoweek. Before becoming a journalist, he was a dirt track racer and short track cheeseburger connoisseur.
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