It’s not about which car wins, but I will put good money on the fact that I can find rednecks who buy the same brands as those driven by their favorite drivers. Like I said above, NASCAR fans are very loyal to companies that sponsor NASCAR.
Whitey is 100% correct. WSJ did a nice article about that a couple of years ago. It was an article about how BIG Nascar is…and how much money is being poured into it. Fan loyalty was the sighted as the biggest factor to all the money being poured in by these companies. The companies know it would love to be a major sponsor for a car.
“I think it makes them students that need more practice. I don’t think that any top driver could start in another top series and expect to have instant success”
If you’ll recall, back in 2003 Jeff Gordon drove JPM’s F1 car around the Indy road course, within a couple of hours, and with no prior experience in the car and without a lot of fine tuning of the car was able to lay down laps that would’ve qualified him for the Indy F1 race of the previous year. Meanwhile JPM took Gordon’s stockcar out on the oval and was some 4 seconds off Gordon’s pace in the same car, this was a four second difference on and oval mind you, a huge difference.
I do think the driving talent of NASCAR drivers are generally overlooked by F1 snobs. The thing is that compared to an F1 car, NASCAR racecars have much, much less grip, much less downforce, the brakes a joke, and the cars weigh much more. Bascially, they are much harder to drive than an F1 car. And I think that’s why F1 drivers who try to race in NASCAR have such a tough time, they are used to cars that have much more capabilities, and when they get into a stockcar that doesn’t , doesn’t stop, and requires more finesse to drive, they are stymied by it. If you watched Kimi Räikkönen’s NASCAR debut in the 2nd tier Nationwide series, all he did throughout the race was complain that he had no grip and that the car was garbage. His crew chief had to constantly remind him that these stockcars simply didn’t have the kind of grip and downforce that he was used to and that the lack of grip was something that all the other drivers have to deal with as well. Kimi finished 27th place 4 laps down.