When combining the on-track product with Silly Season, the final third of the NASCAR Cup Series campaign is holistically the most compelling motorsports offering in the world.
The challenge for NASCAR and its television partners has always been attraction and retention — getting the masses to sample the show, convincing them to come back, and then staying throughout the remainder of a given season.
Formula 1 Drive to Survive is the crowning achievement of a sanctioning body’s digital marketing strategy in using a Netflix documentary series to showcase the larger than life international personalities, politics and intensity of grand prix competition.
The true triumph of Drive to Survive was that it took a motorsport discipline that isn’t particularly compelling near the front of the field and instead emphasized all the things it does best — exotic locales, midpack intrigue and everything that goes into securing one of just 20 rides at the highest level of global motorsports.
Now it’s NASCAR’s turn to create something just as memorable.
Over the past two months, camera crews have already started filming content for a Netflix series set to debut in April, with a creative team that includes Dale Earnhardt Jr., Ben Kennedy plus Connor Schell and Libby Geist of The Last Dance documentary.
At face value, there is so much happening right now that would make tremendous fodder for a NASCAR Drive to Survive equivalent.
- Chase Elliott’s season
- Spire Motorsports’ $65 million investments
- Joey Logano’s elimination
- Martin Truex Jr.’s rollercoaster playoff
- Michael Jordan is everywhere
- Scheduling delays and intrigue
- The still evolving new car
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Stock car racing with its close competition, penchant for contact, and a made for television championship format is tailor made for this kind of spotlight.
The 36 top teams in the discipline race literally every week from February to November. The current format encourages drivers to do whatever it takes to win races, advance in the playoffs and reach the championship race at Phoenix.
The biggest stars aren’t afraid to say politically incorrect things, badmouth each other or the sanctioning body when something happens that leaves them feeling slighted. The economy of the charter system is Formula 1’s Concorde Agreement on a scale with business dealings that reflect it.
NASCAR drivers talk about their version of Drive to Survive
Denny Hamlin says this show needs to go behind the scenes and show all of this in a meaningful way.
“Anytime you can go Inside Baseball for a sport, it’s better,” Hamlin said. “It can certainly to appeal to casuals and the hard cores.”
Joey Logano said his involvement in the show, which will surely include his dramatic elimination from the playoffs at Bristol, left him feeling annoyed.
“Who wants a camera following you and a microphone listening to everything you got,” he said last month on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “And you know, the way this Netflix thing is, we don’t have editing rights.
“So, what they get and what they use is totally up to them, so watch what you say and watch what you do because they can use it, and they can edit it in a way that makes you look completely different than the actual situation that is happening.”
There is a middle ground here, and one that Drive to Survive has struggled with over the past two seasons, in balancing authenticity and fabricated drama. But a NASCAR storyteller shouldn’t need to make it up.
It’s inherently real.
NASCAR, the teams and drivers cannot be afraid to show its potentially seedy underbelly, the uncomfortable conversations inside the haulers and behind closed doors and the genuine authenticity that comes with every moment.
That means less taking kids to school, phone calls from ‘Smoking Hot Wife’ and spotlighting life at home away from the track as was the case with Logano in the Race for the Championship show that aired to generally indifferent reviews last summer.
Brad Keselowski says the NASCAR industry isn’t always willing to portray itself enough as being inherently risky or dangerous.
“One of the things I always find so interesting about our sport is that we work so hard for safety and that’s important,” Keselowski said. “We should always work towards it, but we almost to some degree tell the story too much because it is still pretty dangerous and it’s like we’re trying to convince ourselves that it’s safe and when you come here, weekends like this and some other things, you see the big wrecks and it’s like we’re trying to make ourselves feel better about it by telling the safety story.
“On some side of it it’s kind of like, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t talk so much about it.’ I think we almost water it down for our fans and they don’t understand just how dangerous it still really is to be a race car driver and to race cars or trucks or whatever it might be for a living.”
To his point, a million people didn’t tune into Nik Wallenda walking across a tight rope over the Grand Canyon without a net because they thought he was talented. They did so because they thought he was daring, brave and a little crazy.
That was always the appeal of the Indianapolis 500 too, even if it makes us a little uncomfortable to admit it.
“I think for our sport I always go back to the Ken Squier days because I always loved the way that he talked about the sport, where we’d talk about common men doing uncommon things and living on the edge of safety,” Keselowski said.
Another potential inspiration for NASCAR and their documentary partners to follow for this project is those behind Dirt: The Last Great American Sport that aired uncut on FloRacing and condensed on Fox Sports 1.
It was a tremendously compelling and un-embellished look at the world of dirt Sprint Cars and Midgets through the eyes of Kyle Larson, Tyler Courtney, Thomas Meseraull and Justin Grant.
Producer Paul Gandersman got tremendous buy-in from his subjects, including Larson, who were not afraid to show the dangers and heated emotions associated with high level open-wheel dirt racing. There is one scene, focused on Grant, who denied himself a chance to win the prestigious Chili Bowl Nationals by spinning out late in his heat race.
It resulted in a profanity laced tirade in his hauler. The camera stayed on Grant even after he closed the door, and you simply heard Grant cussing himself out and throwing objects around the lounge inside the team hauler.
The rawness made you cringe and it made you feel and it was reflective of just how much the results matter. Dirt was at the very heart of competition and it’s something the NASCAR showrunners would be wise to take into account.
“It’s going to be on Netflix, right,” Larson said when asked about the NASCAR show. “It’s going to be on Netflix so it’s going to be a big deal. I haven’t been asked to be part of it so I don’t know what their angle is going to be.
“But I also know those types of shows do a good job of showcasing driver personalities outside of the car but also spotlighting the drama and making it way more dramatic than it probably is.
“But that’s okay, it’s fun and I hope we see way more of it in the future.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.