Imagine knowing that Peyton Manning drove his team down for a touchdown, but not being allowed to see how he did it. Did they pass, did they run? You, at home, aren’t allowed to know. Trade secret. Imagine watching Tim Lincecum pitch but no matter where you sit you’re only allowed see it from behind the plate. You can see the field, you can see base runners, but you’re just not allowed to view any of his pitches. If you can see these things on TV or at the stadium, then other teams would be able to see them too. And if they can see them, they can prepare for them, or copy them. At that just isn’t allowed.
It’s ridiculous to think about watching football or baseball that way, but for NASCAR fans that’s all we know. Watching NASCAR live or on TV is like watching any other sport’s box scores- you’ll see the stats, know the winners, but you’ll never really know how they did it.
NASCAR more than any other sport is shrouded in secrecy. How is Jimmie Johnson so dominant? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve watched every race and I can tell you that the 48 pit crew is one of the most mistake-free, I can tell you that Jimmie himself has an almost supernatural ability to avoid big wrecks, and I can tell you that Chad Knaus, his crew chief, is very good. The first two I know because I watch, the last one I know because of the box scores. Because I honestly can’t tell you what Knaus does. Even as the semi-star of “24/7” I still can’t tell you what he does. I know he wins, but I don’t know how.
In fact the 48 team shares a garage with Jeff Gordon’s team. They have the same car for all intents and purposes. Yet there are a great many races when one runs well and the other doesn’t. Why? Why are there aerospace engineers that leave Boeing to join NASCAR? Why does it take 30 people to design a car setup when NASCAR has tried to make them as uniform as possible?
I know that there is more to this sport than right-turns. These cars are a chess game…if you weren’t allowed to see the pieces move.
When HBO does their “Hard Knocks” series with the Jets this Summer it will be riveting. The Jets offseason additions mixed with Rex Ryan’s propensity for honesty will ensure that. But it won’t just be Braylon Edwards’ dropping passes, LT sulking, Antonio Cromartie impregnating women, Santonio Holmes doing drugs, and Mark Sanchez being poised. It will show us, at home, the real way the team is run. We will see special teams practices and coverage schemes that we will recognize again during the regular season; it will show us offensive plans (will they continue to run 30 times a game or will they use their two potential Pro Bowl wide receivers more often?) I’m not asking to know what Sanchez’s audibles are going to be or what plays they’ll run most often in the red zone, but if I watch 4 hours of (heavily edited) practices I’m going to expect to learn something about their strategy. Signing up for reality TV is giving up secrecy (read: potential success) for publicity (read: money) and everyone knows that going in.
Similarly when HBO’s 24/7 covers boxing, I don’t expect a fighter to give up all his secrets. But I do expect to learn something and sometimes in hindsight I’ll realize that I learned more than I first thought. During Pacquiao/Hatton’s 24/7, HBO actually showed Hatton’s team watching the previous week’s episode. They claim they gained nothing out of it, and Hatton’s performance would back that up. But if you have an extra 2 minutes in your day, re-watch that fight. You’ll notice that Pacquiao’s knockout punch came on an uppercut-and-dodge. If you re-watch 24/7 you see Freddy Roach and Manny doing that move a thousand times. It’s not a move he had used in any previous fight, it’s not something that HBO or Roach pointed out during the series, but they had a strategy, it was practiced repeatedly in front of cameras, and it worked to perfection.
Just because you show it doesn’t mean they’re going to be able to stop it. Football has shown that even if the other guys know what you’re going to do (and they know it because they have tens of hours of gametape to watch), you can still be successful if you execute.
The single best comparison for what NASCAR could gain out of this is to look at poker. Go back pre-Rounders, pre-WSOP-on-TV, and imagine the first time someone suggested to card-players that the TV cameras would record what cards they had. Obviously no one would see it live, but everyone could go back and see if you were bluffing. They could see for certain what you had and how you played it. Love the 7-10 off-suit? Everyone’s gonna hear about it. I honestly don’t know if the first person to suggest that got laughed at or beaten up, but surely everyone had to be scared of the concept right? Every trade secret, every little trick, shown for all the world to see? But imagine the game without it now.
Letting the viewer in is a way to get more viewers. Trade trade secrets for more success. Trade privacy for money. It’s what reality TV was built on.
My point of course is this: NASCAR needs to shed some of the secrecy. The successful teams will still be successful even if other teams get to see more of what they’re doing under the hood. The Jimmie Johnsons and Chad Knauses aren’t going to sign up for it- they had their chance and didn’t say two things of interest. But what about the more desperate teams? What about a team that just lost a sponsor and has an eight-figure budget gap to fill? You’re telling me that they wouldn’t jump at the chance to have HBO on their hood in exchange for full access to everything? Full access to car set-up, to wind-tunnel testing? Full access to sit down and have every mechanic and engineer explain why they’re doing what they’re doing? When they run a night race the track physically changes as the temperature does, how do they adjust for that? What makes a good race car?
These aren’t “inside baseball” questions, these are the fundamental underpinnings of the sport. This could bring a new understanding of the sport that would bring respectability and ratings. It could bring real people in, guys that aren’t “car” guys but are just fans of the sport that want to know what’s going on inside the garage. It would add a whole new element, a dare-I-say intellectual aspect that’s always been there in secret.
Talladega is great TV. We know that the track is longer, straighter. We know that cars are faster, and that restrictor plates slow the air flow so that cars don’t go too much above 200 mph. We see that at home, but what about all the stuff we don’t see? Wouldn’t Talladega be the perfect place to pull back the veil?
Imagine a world where everyone knows Peyton Manning’s stats without ever seeing him throw a pass? Imagine seeing the count without ever seeing a pitch? Even with these blindspots, the best will still be known, but they wouldn’t capture our imagination like they would if we were privy to their greatness.
Imagine a world where we already know that Chad Knaus is the best. Now imagine one where we can find out why.