July 16, 2009
By Brian Watkins
Brian Watkins
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After a couple seasons of writing opinion pieces for Insider Racing News, I've decided to switch things up a little bit. Over the next few weeks I'm going to begin mixing my opinion column with more news as well. While writing an opinion is often easier than doing an actual news story, I find the opportunity to research and write more structured pieces appealing. The hardest part will be removing my opinion and preferences from the stories.
Those who have been reading my columns for very long know that I am an unapologetic Kyle Busch fan and a supporter of Toyota in NASCAR. This run against the grain of many readers and has inspired some interesting e-mails back and forth between them and myself. While it will be difficult at times to be unbiased, I will certainly do my best.
One thing I will try to do is to write about topics not generally covered in most news reports. While many reporters already cover "off the beaten path" topics, most news reports cover the same stories with the same angle. It's frustrating to see race coverage in the news and have 15 different reporters giving 15 different versions of the same story. You write "Mark Martin" wins several different ways, but in the end the story is the same. I'm going to strive to find different topics and different stories- this will not only keep my job of writing more interesting, but it will (hopefully) be more interesting to readers as well. As an example, upcoming topics include a closer look at NASCAR diversity. What does it mean? Does it work? How does it affect fan opinions? Between the Races: How Michigan International Speedway spends it's time between NASCAR weekends and what goes into executing a busy race weekend from parking to pit passes to clearing out and cleaning up when the haulers pull away.
As always, if there's anything you'd like to know more about, pass it along and I'll do my best to cover it.
NASCAR Fan Stereotype Still Remains
Not that this will come as a surprise to many of you, but there are those in this world who still are surprised when they learn that NASCAR fans aren't all Chevy or Ford 4x4 driving good ole' boys from the south. On a recent camping trip a cousin of ours dropped by the campsite. At some point in the conversation NASCAR came up, and she seemed honestly shocked that we were fans. While we do live in Kentucky, my wife and I are both originally from Michigan. It took me a minute to figure out why she was shocked, then I realized her perception was that of many others; that middle class church going parents from Michigan wouldn't be NASCAR fans. She wasn't shocked in a disapproving way, but it was still interesting that with all the changes that NASCAR has tried to make in it's marketing to portray NASCAR as a more mainstream sport that appeals to all classes creeds and colors, the stigma of it's early 'shine running day still remains-
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The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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