"People just aren't exposed to it as much": Legendary NASCAR crew chief circles out major point of concern for the sport today

Legendary NASCAR crew chief Rodney Childers recently opened up on the state of the sport when it comes to early exposure to fans. Childers, who will be the crew chief at Spire Motorsports in the upcoming season, was a guest on the Kenny Wallace Show.

During his conversation with the host, Childers revealed how people aren't exposed to NASCAR or racing in general compared to how it was before.

Kenny Wallace mentioned to his guest that a good crew member in NASCAR can make up to $80,000 a year, which the crew chief agreed with. The veteran driver claimed that that kind of money is unheard of anywhere in the world unless one is a major executive or has many years of college.

While agreeing with Wallace over the fact that NASCAR was not short of financial muscle, Childers did believe that the sport wasn't just as exposed to the wider range of audiences as it should have been.

"I think the thing these days is people just aren't exposed to it as much as they were like when we were kids with me growing up around here ... you had all these places that people were exposed to things and as those dirt tracks have went away, all the go-kart tracks have went away around here, honestly the only exposure people get is flipping through a channel one day on a Sunday afternoon and sitting on the couch and they're bored and they're like, 'Oh what's this? I've never watched a NASCAR race before. Let me see what this is like.' And at that point when it's somebody's first time, they flip that channel on their first race they've ever watched, you're hoping it's an exciting one," he said [30:00 onward].

Childers claimed that if the race is 'a snooze fest' for a first-time fan, they wouldn't want to experience that again. Because of this, the crew chief said that getting the right exposure for fans and getting them to attend races was one of the 'key' areas NASCAR should focus on.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. once commented on popularity of NASCAR

It's a widely accepted fact in the NASCAR community that the sport's viewership and media ratings have declined from the height of its popularity in the '90s. However, in an interview with Free Press in 2018, Dale Earnhardt Jr. expressed hope in the sport and felt that it would regain its lost popularity soon.

Junior, who was working with NBC as a broadcaster at that time, said he was puzzled about the 'perception' of NASCAR. However, he remarked that in the 2018 season, he could smell 'a change in the air,' and that there was an energy in the races from his viewpoint.

"I think that we are doing amazing work as a broadcast team. I think the damn product on the track is perfect. I couldn't ask for anything more over the last several weeks. If we keep doing that week in and week out, we're going to make it back."

With that said, it's worth mentioning that the viewership and the ratings for the Daytona 500, NASCAR's biggest race, are nothing like they were in the 90s. The Daytona 500 which Dale Earnhardt Sr. won in 1998 had a rating of 8.6 with a viewership number of 13.044M. The Daytona 500, which Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won in 2023, had a rating of 4.4 with 8.173M viewership numbers.