Bad times, bad racing, or flawed perceptions?

By DAVID GREEN

One of the hardest questions to answer these days would have to be: What is the state of the sport of auto racing?

Fan dissatisfaction is a recurrent theme. The quality of competition is constantly under scrutiny. The sagging economy is a pervasive issue.

And, as I have suggested in this space before, there's not a whole lot of confidence in the leaders of major-league auto racing. Brian France is the butt of every NASCAR joke. Tony George never got as much respect as fellow Hoosier Dan Quayle. In Formula One, the antagonistic Max Mosley is gone, but the selection of Jean Todt as his successor represents anything but a regime change.

So, how much of it is real, valid gloom and doom and how much, as NASCAR's Tony Stewart recently suggested, is perception?

Far be it from this observer to claim knowledge of the truth that we all seek. But it does seem to be an unusually turbulent and unstable time. And that probably affects perceptions as much as, if not more than, it impacts empirically quantifiable reality.

In NASCAR's case, I have to say that much of the sport's image problem is the result of its own doing, with some media complicity. My assessment is that on-track competition is clearly better with regard to numbers -- of different race winners, of drivers with legitimate chances to win races, of full-time participating teams, of prize money and championship value -- than it was three or four decades ago.

But it's not quite as breathtaking -- for mass audiences, anyway -- as NASCAR has hyped itself.

For the most part, the media played along with that -- not merely with the things that reporters wrote, but with the frenzy over television rights and speculation about overtaking the NFL in popularity and the gluttonous obsession with stealing everybody else's toys (Juan Pablo Montoya, Sam Hornish Jr., Dario Franchitti, and recently the mindless obsession with Danica Patrick).

NASCAR further does itself a disservice with its micromanagement of rules and public castigation of competitors for the most miniscule offenses. In this, the media are also complicit, in reporting these "crimes" as if they were of any consequence. Conversely, Formula One appears to have real problems of serious import -- technical espionage and race-fixing. It all has a chilling effect on the confidence of fans.

Ironically, F1 -- historically dismissed by hard-core NASCAR fans as boring -- is now being condemned by its own ranks. Fans, pundits and competitors alike bemoan the pristine new circuits which lack the soul of older, traditional tracks, and criticize the sanitized high-tech but low-excitement racing.

Bad times, bad racing, or just flawed perceptions?

It's up to each individual to decide. But for sure, there's no consensus that this is any sort of golden age of motor sport.