Happy Hour: Your responses to Indy's race attendance and more

It’s time for Happy Hour. As always, tweet us your thoughts or shoot us an email at happyhourmailbag@yahoo.com if you want to participate.

A couple housekeeping notes before we get to your feedback from what we wrote about attendance at Indianapolis on Sunday.

NASCAR said Thursday that it’s going to run the lower downforce 2017 rules preview at Michigan in August. The move makes sense given that the lower downforce rules were in effect at Michigan earlier this year. There’s no point in making teams run two different rules configurations at the same track.

It’s also making some safety improvements when it comes to the area around a driver’s feet to protect the lower extremities. In hard front-impact crashes, bodywork and pedals, etc can be forced towards the driver’s body (how Kyle Busch suffered his injuries in 2015). With some reinforcements and rules changes, NASCAR hopes to do what it can to prevent other drivers from suffering lower body injuries in vicious accidents.

Now on to your emails and tweets.

Attendance will continue to drop as long as ticket prices remain high. The bigger problem however is the quality of the racing. I propose a new format similar to the old local short track racing. For example: 4 heat races (10 laps each) with the top five in each advancing to the A feature, the remainders advancing to a B feature (approximately 50 laps). The top five there would advance to the tail end of the A feature (approximately 100 laps). Number of laps would be adjusted based on the size of the track. And no more Chase! – Charlie

NASCAR has tried the heat race format to no avail in the Xfinity Series. Heat races mean little when a driver can’t race aggressively when he or she knows a crash in a heat race means no spot in the main race.

Tracks have also done a lot of things for people to increase value for their ticket purchase including concerts and opportunities to walk on the track before the race. Given the companies that own the majority of tracks in NASCAR are publicly owned, tracks can’t get rid of ticket revenue altogether even if it’s not the primary source of income.

The Chase is also not going anywhere.

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My interest in Nascar goes back to the late 1960`s. Many changes have taken place in Nascar. The leadership seems to be totally confused as the changes seem to be uncontrolled. Now they are even involved in the coming election.
My solution is to record the race, them ask my wife to watch the end to find out the winner. If it turns out to be one of the Busch brothers or #2 or #22 I cancel the recording. When Richard Petty was running they had REAL cars and although Richard won a lot it was still worth watching without all the wings and flaps and spoilers etc. To watch who runs slow enough to save gas to win is not exciting racing. Nascar has such a hold on everyone nobody can express an opinion with out getting in trouble. I got beat every Sat. night by Fred Lorenzen and it was the best time of my life. Need more Benny Parsons. – Neil

The hate surrounding four of the best drivers in the sport is fascinating. Dislike of a driver is understandable; after all, sports are more fun when you have favorites and teams you like. But refusing to watch because the driver you didn’t like won? Come on. That says more about your fandom than the driver does.

And for the millionth time, the racing was not better back in the day. Yes, drivers could pass with ease, but that’s because only a handful of cars would finish on the lead lap.

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How about identifying one of the major reasons for the decline in interest in NASCAR – the character of the fan base itself? There is no other sport of which I am aware where the fans spend most of their energy b****ing and moaning rather than cheering for their favorite team or individual. These fans take more interest in hating and criticizing NASCAR officials and certain drivers than they do rooting for the driver they claim is their favorite.

For example, if I were a Dale Earnhardt Jr. fan, I would be concerned about his long-term health and future in the sport. But is that what we hear from the 88 camp? No. We hear how Kyle Busch is destroying the sport. And we’ve heard this song before when Jimmie Johnson was supposedly destroying the sport.

My take? The ignorant fan base is destroying the sport. – Lorraine

Anyone agree with Lorraine?

NASCAR fans can certainly be a fickle bunch, especially NASCAR fans on Twitter. And yes, there can be a lot of complaining.

As we’ve seen with this election season, people feed on and get a rush off of negativity. Is that something at play with a vocal segment of NASCAR’s fanbase?

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NASCAR’s 2017 start times: And they wonder why they can’t get people in the seats. – Bill

Is a one-hour change for a race really enough to impact attendance? Yes, we realize that it can impact those making a significant drive to attend a race in person, but is there really that much of a difference between a race that ends at 6 and one that ends at 7? We’ve all functioned on one less hour of sleep, right?

If you don’t like the new start times, you may feel that paragraph is trivializing your concerns. That’s understandable. But what you also have to understand is that the exponentially more fans watching on television are a bigger priority than the fans at the track. It can be hard to hear and understand that, but it’s the truth.

If you’re not familiar with utilitarianism, go look it up. That’s what’s at work with the later start times.

The last time the Texas spring race was on a Sunday was because of the Final Four (which was in Dallas). The race was subsequently pushed to Monday because of rain.

The Sunday afternoon race will get better television ratings and could produce better racing if the track is warmer. The move was initially announced in May and reinforced with the start time announcement. Here’s what track president Eddie Gossage said in a statement in May. The track will have Xfinity Series practice starting on Thursday. It seems unnecessary for the Xfinity Series to be at a track for three days but what do we know.

“Between meetings with our fan council, feedback from season-ticket holders and Texas Motor Speedway fans in general, the overall sentiment is that they preferred a Sunday race because it provided a more expansive weekend of activities … We also will return some other activities from the past that will cause our fans to spend more time at the track and in the campgrounds making for a full week of racing-related events,” Gossage said.

Brian is referencing Chicago White Sox pitcher Chris Sale’s tantrum from last week. After some thought, we’re going to go off-the-wall and say Carl Edwards. He’s running a Tony Stewart throwback scheme at Darlington and he could do it in honor of one of Stewart’s outbursts.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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