NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France discussed the sport’s great strides in technology and innovation across several topics on Tuesday as he answered fan questions on MRN Radio’s "NASCAR Live" with Eli Gold.
During the nearly hour-long conversation with fans, France talked about the genesis of NASCAR’s innovative pit-road officiating system, which will be rolled out this year.
"It started when I declared two or three years ago that we were going to have a stronger march toward having more technology in the sport in general," France said.
"We want to (use technology) when it’s smart, when we can bring in new partners to help us with new technology, or we can actually lower costs and get better outcomes. We’re using a lot more technology in designing the rules packages for the present and the future. We’re doing that to get a better result, to be more exact so when we make a rule change, it does what we designed it to do.
"Embracing technology is going to be something that we’re going to be measured about, but we’re going to be aggressive about."
As an example, France described the great pains that were taken before implementing the officiating system and explained the process.
"We spent a lot of time and a lot of resources over the last several years to make sure that it’s highly reliable," France said. "There are cameras that are custom designed with innovative technology that will be in every pit stall, recording every movement that happens.
"While we’re pretty effective with our inspectors today, we will be much more effective at figuring out what’s going on inside of a pit stop or all the things that go on to make sure that all works properly. I think you’ll see we’ve been very careful to beta-test this over the last many months. We’re very confident that it will be good."
France looked to technology to capture Millennial fans in a way that’s unique to the NASCAR in-venue experience.
"They want to have some participation in particular when they’re there," France said. "They want to be able to connect. Tell people where they’re at. Show them where they’re at, and do it in real time.
"No sport will have the opportunity in the future that we will have, only because of all the telemetry, all of the data that is flowing around that is so relevant to an event. When we are able effectively to hook the device that you carry to the pertinent things that are happening at an event, we’ll have some additional breakthroughs. We’re all over this. It’s a big opportunity, and we’re looking forward to making sure we get it right."
Innovation extends to sponsorship as France discussed entitlement partner XFINITY, which begins its 10-year sponsorship of the series formerly entitled by Nationwide.
"They’re a technology company; (it’s) in their DNA so they’re going to bring an awful lot of interesting technology and video on demand," France said.
"They’re going to bring a level of excitement, too, because they’re in a competitive space, and they’re used to doing innovative things to reach people. They’re thrilled, and we’re thrilled that they’ll be our partner for a long time."
France addressed several other hot topics in the hot-stove, bench-racing discussion with fans.
On seeking a new entitlement partner to replace Sprint after 2016: "It’s really about making sure that somebody is going to be in that position and is going to utilize the rights that are granted — which are enormous — really, really well. They’re in the categories that are relevant. We just talked about technology and we talked about reaching the Millennial fans so we’ll be very careful. There’s lots of interest, and we want to make a good, sound decision. We have a lot of experience at trying to size these opportunities up and choose the right partner."
On potential changes to the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format: "What we have today is a very, very understandable format, and it worked extraordinarily well. It doesn’t mean that we can’t find some ways down the road to make it better. I think you’ve seen college football do that. They’re doing it right now with their own version of a new playoff structure. So we will be open-minded, but we want to balance making sure that whatever format we have, everybody really understands it."
On escalating emotions during the Chase that lead to fights: "We’re always disappointed when things escalate to that level. Having said that, the emotions were high. The stakes were unbelievably high for several of the drivers competing on the night in Texas. We’ll deal with that. We were very aggressive in making sure that the proper people who contributed to that were punished effectively. We’ll do that. But we can expect, and everybody should expect, high emotions late in the race with a lot on the line. Drivers getting more aggressive, that’s a good thing. That’s what NASCAR’s historically been about, and we will balance making sure things don’t escalate into places that no one likes."
On shortening races: "Shorter races in general make sense. Sometimes a specific venue or a track believes differently, and they have their own fan base and research that says, ‘Hey, we like a 500-mile race on this particular weekend.’ Or in the case of Charlotte, a 600-mile event. Generally speaking, we’re very open to working with the tracks and local markets, who do know their market best, to shorten races whenever it’s possible, and we will continue to do that."
On NASCAR Hall of Fame’s efforts to attract more fans: "We don’t operate the hall of fame although we’re partners in it, and I know they’re doing a lot of things. They’re running various regional and local promotions and even some national promotions. By historical standards of halls of fame, it’s done fine."
On addressing domestic violence issues: "Society has a way of evolving with important topics like domestic violence. That is being scrutinized and dealt with much more severely and rightfully so. What leagues might have done in the past won’t be acceptable in the future, and we will be no exception. You can expect us to be very, very aggressive at dealing with it. We have Kurt Busch as an example who is going through his own allegations at this point, and no charges (have been filed). We will watch that carefully and see what happens as an example. What we wouldn’t do is try to get out in front of a set of facts that haven’t been determined yet by the court system. That we won’t do. We will be careful in letting a fair process take place."
Listen to the full interview here on MRN.com.
