Parity in NASCAR is The Problem

The parity that NASCAR had achieved with its next gen car was praised highly throughout the 2022 season.  To be honest, I was never really a fan of it.  Now in the middle of the 2023 season, I’m still not a fan of it.  It’s not as bad as it was last year, but parity in NASCAR remains a huge problem in the current season. In fact, it is the problem.

One of the things I enjoy doing while watching a race is keeping up with the lap times.  I enjoy seeing when certain cars fall off in comparison to others.  This most recent race in Nashville I noticed that there was not a whole lot of variation in lap times. While this may produce a couple of laps of three wide racing for the lead, it doesn’t help a whole lot with passing.

I recently watched the film The Program which was about Lance Armstrong and performance enhancing drugs in the sport of cycling.  It made me think about “parity” as a strategy to bring about ratings.  I’ve never been a fan of cycling, but even I knew who Lance Armstrong was when he was winning.  I couldn’t name a cyclist today. It has made me wonder if “parity” is even a good strategy to bring in casual viewers.  Ergo, I am revisiting the topic of parity in NASCAR.

Denny Hamlin finished third at Nashville. He said the two best cars finished 1-2 (Chastain and Truex). pic.twitter.com/7auFL7xsR2

— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) June 26, 2023

Parity Makes Track Position Far too Important:

I remember watching races where Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, and other drivers could have something go wrong, go a couple laps down in a race, and be able to fully recover from it with a decent finish.  It’s nothing to get a lap back these days with the free pass and wave around.  Yet if one loses a couple laps these days, barring an excessive amount of cautions in a row this has become much rarer.  The parity of the next gen car is partially to blame for that.

As Denny Hamlin pointed out after Nashville, the cars were just too similar in lap times to really pass.  Passing seems to take place either at a restart or long into a green flag run.  The former is pretty much true every week, but the latter is only true when the tires fall off enough for driving style to make a difference.  Hamlin stated that the best cars finished first and second.  I’m not sure that is entirely true.  Kyle Busch had some bad luck at least twice and was able to come back through the field.  Harvick seemed to have a strong car as well, recovering from a speeding penalty but fell laps down due to a badly timed tire puncture.

Parity just doesn’t allow for comers and goers.  It takes a really fast car to be able to rebound from bad luck.  With the next gen car, it takes a slightly quicker car and a bit of good luck to rebound.  Track position is king.  This means that qualifying is much more important.  It also means that there are less interesting mini-narratives that can be developed by the actual racing product.  This brings me to my next point.

Parity Reduces Organic Mini-Narratives:

What do I mean by “organic mini-narratives?” It’s quite simple actually.  I mean individual driver or team stories that develop within the race simply due to the racing.  I’m sure many fans have noticed the decline in the quality of some of the commentary.  Stories used to develop naturally within the racing itself for the commentators to talk about. It could be a dominant driver trying to make their way back on the lead lap after some bad luck, or a much weaker car that had significantly improved itself enough to sneak up and steal a win.

Also it seems like it is too often the case that commentators (or cameras) are missing action.  I feel like this is the case, because they don’t know what to talk about (or look for.)  Why do I believe this?  Again, it is quite simple, because most of the time, there isn’t anything to talk about (or watch!)  Occasionally, those in the booth will get orgasmic about a couple laps of three-wide racing for the lead.  Most of the time, however, they are left sounding like used car salesmen trying to sell us a lemon of a racing product.  That is when they aren’t hoping for a caution to bark at.

When something finally does happen, the camera either misses it or we’re watching a commercial.  It’s not the booth’s fault that there isn’t much else to talk about.  Every driver’s day is almost identical.  Any time they “go through the field,” every driver needs more track position.  This isn’t always the case, but it is so often the case, that I think that those in the booth forget to even look for any interesting developing stories.  They’re too busy waiting for a wreck–or even just the slightest contact–to focus on.

In the Age of Parity there are no Kings only Chaos:

I have previously argued that parity hinders great rivalries, because it is unpredictable and increases aggressive driving in such a manner that the only rivalry is everyone versus everyone. Parity also decreases dominant drivers, obviously.  The great rivalries of the past were between dominant drivers.  Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt come to mind.

In this generation of imposed parity, we will not see another Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, or Kyle Busch.  So long as parity is successfully enforced, I doubt Denny Hamlin will achieve his goal of reaching 60 career wins.  While it is great to see a driver that doesn’t normally win get a win, parity, by its very nature, makes it less impressive.  If a driver beats a Jimmie Johnson in their prime, the win obviously means more.  It’s like economic inflation, when you increase the number of overall winners, you decrease the value of each win.

So far in 2023, we have seen drivers be able to get multiple wins.  William Byron and Kyle Busch come to mind.  In my opinion, this has little to do with parity.  It is very likely that this has to do with being able to get around parity.  This is not a bad thing.  In fact, much to the dismay of NASCAR executives, teams getting around parity is about the only hope this next gen car has of producing an interesting season.

Hypocrisy (and Naivety) in Sporting Culture:

This brings me back to the film that I mentioned earlier, The Program.  There seems to be an inherent hypocrisy, as well as a certain naivety, within all sports.  It certainly exists within a certain line of thinking when it comes to “cheating.”  In the film, I only identified with journalist David Walsh in one way.  That way was the feeling of seeing a sport he loved become something he felt it didn’t need to be.  I feel that way while watching NASCAR these days, but it is for all together different reasons.

There was a scene in which David Walsh was worried about Lance Armstrong having to use brakes going up the mountain.  He assumed the athlete was using performance enhancing drugs.  Much the way, people worry about “cheating” in NASCAR.  I want to make it clear that I don’t question David Walsh’s journalistic integrity, only the integrity of his philosophy of sport.

If something brings lasting attention to a sport, then what is the problem? Like it or not, Lance Armstrong was great for the sport of cycling.  Just like Chad Knaus, Ray Evernham, and Rodney Childers have been great for NASCAR.  These guys are geniuses at what they do, especially when it comes to bending (or getting around) the rules a bit to gain a competitive edge.  When I think of the #4 car’s rear window at Las Vegas in 2018, I don’t think that it was bad for the sport.  I think about how ingenious it was!

Sports are about competition.  Yet some fans and executives think it’s about something else. David Walsh is portrayed in The Program as being upset that it “wasn’t natural.”  Weights, treadmills, and bikes aren’t natural either!  The line drawn between what is considered fair competition and what is considered unfair just seems to be very arbitrary and meaningless to me.

The same naive hypocrisy exists within NASCAR.  Only in auto racing this arbitrary line of what is a natural/fair or unnatural/unfair makes even less philosophical sense.  The competition in NASCAR already had an expanded area of competition.  Not every team has to run the same set up, or even use the same manufacturer.  The crew chief and pit crews are just as important to the competition as the drivers.  This move towards parity (and all the over-zealous penalties that come with that) seems to be moving away from that.

Deregulation can save NASCAR’s Next Gen Fiasco:

How much parity do we really want in sports?  Do we want to make sure drivers all have the same body type via fat suits?  Do we want AI crew chiefs that are confined to operate within the guidelines set by the totalitarian executives?  NASCAR already limits practice time on the actual track. This was all supposed to be about saving money for the teams. (In all honesty, I think that is more about making sure that NASCAR and the tracks don’t have to give up any more money to the teams in their TV deal.)

Nashville wasn’t a bad race, at least not by next gen standards.  There just wasn’t a whole lot of variation in lap times.  When this happens, it might as well be a circular parade.  The answers to NASCAR’s problems won’t be found in trying to be more like Formula 1, at least not in the manner they have been trying to be more like F1.  Their current approach with the next gen car has been an epic failure.

Deregulation is needed in NASCAR.  NASCAR needs to loosen up, rather than tightening down on these penalties associated with working on these disastrous cars.  I’m talking about going back to the days of there being one template that went down the center of the car during inspection (as seen in the image above.)  Let the teams work on the cars and the parts.  The racing will get better.  Just look at how much lap time variation exists within Formula 1.

By all means keep trying to bring in new fans, just don’t do it by micro-managing the product.  Keep the rules very general and mostly limited to safety.  Expand the area of competition. Let the competitors compete! Sports aren’t about parity.  They’re about competition. They’re not about overcoming your exact equals, but overcoming adversaries which are far superior.  As many people are “purists”, in the sense that they think competition should be “natural”, allow me to try to connect to that naive hypocrisy which seems to exist within sporting culture:

In nature, genetic variation is key to the survival of a species over time.  Sameness makes a species susceptible to extinction.