Remembering That Magical Day When NASCAR Crested The Wave

So much attention has been given to NASCAR’s painful decline that people often overlook what a real phenomenon stock-car racing was. On Sunday, NASCAR will close its season at Homestead, Fla., where stock-car racing hit its peak the 14 years ago this month.

The 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup season was already a big success by the time the series arrived in Homestead for its final race. NASCAR had launched its 10-driver, 10-race “Chase for the Nextel Cup” in September, and television ratings for races had spiked over 2003.

Homestead-Miami Speedway had been reconfigured a year earlier with higher banking, and the 2004 finale was a thriller, with Kurt Busch finishing fifth to hold off Jimmie Johnson by a scant eight points for the championship. Johnson finished second in the race to Greg Biffle.

Busch, 26, drove the No. 97 Ford for Jack Roush, who’d had another driver, Matt Kenseth, win the 2003 championship in a Ford. Finishing just behind Busch, in order, were Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Tony Stewart — an illustrious bunch.

The points chase was so close that Busch was unsure that he’d won the championship until someone told him afterward. He grabbed a checkered flag and waved it out his window during his victory lap, then took the new Nextel Cup trophy and thrust it over his head.

The cherry on top came a couple of days later. The race earned a 6.2 rating on NBC, with 9.9 million viewers, a 38% increase over the 2003 race there. The average rating for the 10 “Chase” races was a 4.6, with 7.8 million viewers, a 12% increase over 2003.

“We are thrilled with the continued success of NASCAR on NBC and TNT,” said Ken Schanzer, the president of NBC Sports. “When the top four drivers were separated by just nine points with 72 laps to go, it proved positively the wisdom of the `Chase.’ In that moment the sport’s burgeoning popularity coupled with the innovative season ending `Chase’ and [International Speedway Corporation’s] investment to create a track worthy of hosting a true championship event, all combined to create exceptional drama.”

That day was the high-water mark for NASCAR. Two weeks earlier, “NASCAR dads” had carried George W. Bush to reelection. Consider the sponsors of some of the cars in the race: Lowe’s, DuPont, Home Depot, Miller Lite, GM Goodwrench, Tide, Budweiser, UPS, Target, even Viagra. NASCAR seemed as if it could only get bigger.

But there were cracks. The next day’s New York Times included a prescient sports column by Selena Roberts, a Florida native. She wrote:

“The France dynasty has always been innovative, driven to broaden the appeal of a sport that has defied a stagnant landscape. But now they’re risking their Carolina roots by exiting charming outposts like Rockingham, N.C. In expanding north and west, capitalizing on big-dollar sites, NASCAR has left some of its core crowd dealing with abandonment issues.”

Subsequent implementations would prove not to be so popular, especially with the core crowd: The safer-but-unappealing Car of Tomorrow, several confusing amendments to the points system and postseason formats, then “stage” racing — yellow flags for ad spots.

Charming drivers from working-class backgrounds departed and left the sport to a bunch of much less colorful kids who knew what to say at corporate lunches, but did not have to race as if their lunch money depended on whether they crumpled a fender.

Ratings and attendance at races declined to the point where NASCAR stopped disclosing estimated attendances and purses at races, and corporations and sponsors soon left, too. Danica Patrick entered, drew lots of fans but was mediocre, then exited without a victory.

The television rating for the 2017 race at Homestead, also on NBC, was a 2.8, with 4.7 million viewers, down 36% in rating and 39% in viewership from 2015, or down 54% in rating and 53% in viewership from 2004. Matching the 2017 numbers would be a victory for NBC.

Hey, stuff goes out of style. People don’t have the time or patience to watch sporting events, or much of anything else. NASCAR is more environmentally conscious, but the cars still burn tons and tons of gasoline turning thousands of laps. Kids don’t like cars as much now.

But that is old news, and NASCAR appears to be shape-shifting as it tries to come up with viable financial models to hang onto the fans it has. I just remember when stock-car racing was really hot stuff, and nobody can, or should, take that away from NASCAR.