After another ho-hum race, this time at Watkins Glen, NASCAR insiders are sounding the alarm on the sport. It’s flat out been a little boring this year, a pair of insiders for The Athletic claimed.
Speaking on The Teardown podcast, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi brought up something that’s critical to the sport right now. There just isn’t enough juice.
“NASCAR when it can sort of transcend our little racing world, that means usually something big is going on,” Gluck said. “I mean saw this week people are talking about the (Connor) Zilisch video is going everywhere. That’s not what you want it to be on. (You want it) because there was an unbelievable finish or some drivers were getting into it or whatever. Right now it just feels like we’re in the waiting game.”
Shane van Gisbergen took the win at Watkins Glen, winning his fourth straight road course. He hasn’t had a challenger this year on that style of track.
But it’s not just the road courses that have caused some to hit the snooze button on NASCAR this season. There just haven’t been many thrilling races this year. And there isn’t enough outside of that to make up for it.
Bianchi pointed out two missing ingredients right now. He outlined them.
“To me two of the things on my list would be personalities,” he said. “You need bigger, larger-than-life personalities. I think a lot of the drivers are really great guys, they have personalities. But are any of them really larger than life right now? Are they Jeff Gordon? Are they a Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Are they a Tony Stewart who got that recognition? Are they going to be hosting daytime talk shows or Saturday Night Live or anything like that? The answer is no.
“Do we have a driver that’s going to show up on the MTV music awards and introduce somebody like Dale Earnhardt Jr. once did? And people will be like, ‘Oh it’s Dale Earnhardt Jr., he was in Rolling Stone.’ You don’t have that right now.”
That’s half the equation. NASCAR can’t exactly coax the other one out.
“Then the other big thing: rivalries,” Bianchi said. “You need two big personalities butting heads on a weekly basis for wins and championships. That’s what helps sell. That is the foundation of NASCAR, is great rivalries, in any era. When is the last great, consistent, prolonged rivalry we have? I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head.”
Can Carson Hocevar be that guy?
The good news is that NASCAR has some of the pieces to potentially eventually see the puzzle fall into place. Carson Hocevar is one of those pieces.
“I think we can identify one half of whatever rivalry there will be, because Hocevar is not backing down,” Gluck said. “You look at the comments he made to NASCAR.com this week, the Zane Smith stuff. He truly at this point in his career is like, ‘I don’t care’ and he’s fueling the fire.
“So we just need somebody, I guess, to get into it with him, because he is going to be a very willing part of that, it seems like. He’s not going to try to smooth it over. So if you get somebody else that is going at Hocevar… but aside from that I feel like we’re waiting for a great race, we’re waiting for something to happen in the playoffs. The playoff bubble’s not particularly compelling at the moment. It just doesn’t feel like this season has given us sort of something to push the story forward as journalists every week.”
Bianchi agreed with that assessment of Hocevar’s potential impact in NASCAR. Well, in part.
“I agree with you on Hocevar. I think he has the potential,” he said. “He certainly is willing to stand his ground and not be pushed around. He’s not going to change, and that’s great. I think he’s with the right team, by the way, that’s going to have his back and isn’t going to be like, ‘Hey, we need to do this and that.’
“But the other part of this, though, is he’s got to win races. You can’t have a rivalry built around guys who aren’t winning races. I think he’s got the potential. I think we both think he’s got the potential to do that, but you’ve got to win consistently to do that. He’s not there yet.”
