during practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway on July 7, 2016 in Sparta, Kentucky.
RacingBy Phillip Bupp on

NASCAR announced major changes to all three of their series in order to try and create exciting racing throughout an entire race instead of just at the end.

The most serious change is that races in all three series will have three segments which end after approximately 25%, 50% and 100% of a NASCAR race. And the top 10 after segments 1 and 2 will receive regular season points where the segment winner receives a playoff bonus point.

NASCAR made these changes to try and better reward winning races, making sure drivers don’t ride around for most of the race and stay out of trouble for the end of the race as well as TV networks keeping viewership throughout an entire race and to put more commercials during caution instead of during green flag racing.

While many fans didn’t much care for these changes, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers sure loved it. And if you follow many of those drivers on Twitter, you got an explosion of tweets right after the announcement was made from drivers who had various forms of praise for the new system.

Granted, NASCAR drivers were consulted for this new system so it’s not shocking most would like this system. And even if a driver didn’t like this format, it’s probably not the best time or place to criticize the company that signs your checks. But it’s strange that a bunch of drivers are tweeting similar things at the same time. It kind of screams of NASCAR telling drivers to tweet their praise of the system so it can be seen as an overwhelming success.

Out of 30 Monster Energy Cup Series drivers Twitter accounts, half tweeted praise of the new system. Of the 15 who didn’t tweet, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, David Gilliland, Trevor Bayne, Greg Biffle, Martin Truex Jr, Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Danica Patrick, Ryan Newman, AJ Allmendinger and Kyle Busch hadn’t posted since the announcement while Denny Hamlin, Austin Dillon and Brad Keselowski were at the press conference and did interviews praising the system.

https://twitter.com/Mc_Driver/status/823678545901867009

Kasey Kahne didn’t tweet himself but retweeted others praising the system so I included him in those who praised the system.

There is a chance these drivers are sincere in their praise. A few of these drivers have criticized the sport on occasion so it’s not like all of these people are “company-men” 100% of the time. But even if these drivers are sincere in their opinions of NASCAR’s new system, it doesn’t look good when everyone tweets at the same time. NASCAR isn’t the only company who would have multiple people tweet similar things about the same concept at the same time but don’t make it so obvious or at least give the impression to fans that this was a PR move. Because fans already don’t like the changes, they sure don’t like being fed PR through their favorite drivers.

 

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @phillipbupp

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