With interest down, NASCAR needs drama to spice up Chase – Sporting News

Two years ago, Brad Keselowski revved up NASCAR’s Chase by using his bumper to rough up championship contenders Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon.

His aggression sparked a wild postrace fight with Kenseth at Charlotte Motor Speedway and an all-out brawl with Gordon’s crew at Texas.

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The incidents fired up fans and sent a charge through the 10-race Chase, one that generated momentum going into the season finale and the championship race.

Last year, it was Kenseth and Joey Logano getting into it. Logano wrecked Kenseth to win at Kansas. Kenseth retaliated at Martinsville and got suspended two races. Though the incidents ended with both drivers out of the Chase, it sparked the kind of drama NASCAR needed at a critical time of year.

What will happen this year?

There’s no telling, but something better happen soon to spice up a Chase that has yet to pique the interest of fans.

The first two Chase races set an all-time low for Chase TV ratings, down 12 percent at Chicagoland Speedway and 14 percent at New Hampshire. They continued to decline with Sunday’s race at Dover.

Along with declining attendance at most Sprint Cup tracks, the downturn in interest has NASCAR, its teams and tracks concerned.

What does the sport need?

Drama. Controversy. Excitement.

The kind that sparked the 2014 and 2015 Chases.

“I remember last week you guys were talking about how there wasn’t enough drama. There is going to be drama,” Logano told reporters earlier this week. “There was drama last week, we just weren’t throwing fists at each other. We were talking about how many cars are going to make it and not make it.”

MORE: Logano admits mistake in Kenseth feud

Clearly, that wasn’t enough. Fans didn’t seem too interested in the eliminations of Tony Stewart, Kyle Larson, Jamie McMurray and Chris Buescher. None was a surprise.

Why are ratings down? And why does there seem to be less interest in this year’s Chase?

There could be several factors:

• No Dale Earnhardt Jr. NASCAR’s most popular driver has missed the past 11 races with a concussion and announced at Darlington five weeks ago that he would miss the rest of the season. Taking the sport’s biggest star out of the playoffs and championship picture can’t be good and has, no doubt, caused part of his fan base to tune out.

• No Jeff Gordon. Gordon added his own spark to last year’s Chase when he won at Martinsville and had a chance to win the championship in the final race of his career. Gordon, who also had a huge following, retired after the season, though he has filled in for Earnhardt in select races. NASCAR could be feeling the effect of losing one of its biggest stars of the past three decades.

• A struggling Tony Stewart. The one driver who could have added intrigue and drama to this year’s Chase was Stewart, who has always been among NASCAR’s most polarizing characters. Stewart had high hopes for his final season, but he got off to a bad start when he missed the first eight races with a broken back. Though he qualified for the Chase with a dramatic win at Sonoma, he struggled most of the year and bowed out in the first round of the playoffs. A Stewart resurgence could have done wonders for this year’s Chase.

• The dominance of Toyota. Between Joe Gibbs Racing and Martin Truex Jr.’s Furniture Row Racing, Toyota teams have won 15 of 29 races this season and entered the Chase as the favorites to win the championship. That obviously doesn’t sit well with Ford and Chevrolet fans, many of whom still resent the fact Toyota is even in the sport.

• Dominating performances. Truex has won three of five races heading into Charlotte, and though he is well-liked and a sentimental favorite, no one likes to see one driver dominate. He led 187 of 400 laps at Dover and won by 7.5 seconds. Now he is headed to a track where he led 392 of 400 laps in May. Each Chase race so far has featured a dominant performance by one or two drivers who have led 100 laps or more and none have generated much late-race excitement.

MORE: Drivers want points bonus going into Chase

What does NASCAR need to change all that and generate some momentum?

It needs contact. Aggression. Controversy. It needs postrace fireworks and a developing feud between two compelling drivers.

It needs someone or some incident to stir things up and get fans excited.

It needs drama to make fans want to talk about NASCAR on Monday morning instead of the conversation being dominated by the NFL, college football and the MLB playoffs.

Logano believes that will happen, just like it did in the previous two seasons.

“This format creates drama, whether it’s just trying to make it through the next round or trying to get a win or feelings getting hurt,” he said. “That’s going to happen. There is just so much on the line every week that drivers end up racing desperate, and when you race that way, you are bound to hurt someone’s feelings, or vice versa. It can happen either way.”

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Though some fans remain disgruntled with the Chase — either the elimination-round tweaks made two years ago, or the format in its entirety — Logano believes the system works. The Chase enters Round 3 Saturday at Charlotte and four more drivers will be eliminated in three weeks at Talladega.

“When people are in do-or-die moments, they have to do something to get through, and a lot of times they do it,” Logano said. “During the regular part of the season, the same move may not make that person mad because we are not racing to get to the next round, or it cost you one spot and it’s not the end of the world.

“Now it costs you a spot and that could be the difference in getting to the next round. The intensity picks up and that creates a lot of drama.”

With seven races remaining in the Chase and interest on the decline, NASCAR needs the intensity to pick up.

And it needs some sort of drama.