NASCAR is not as popular as it once was. Peaking in the mid-2000's, it's seen a gradual decline in
popularity and in recent years, the TV viewership and live attendance figures have hit record lows.
So a lot of people who are flicking through the channels and stumble across the sport are
probably not very familiar with it, or at least not familiar with it in its modern form.
They may be left with some questions - why do all the cars look the damn same?
Why do the headlights look weird? Why does it look so different from the old NASCAR races?
What's on the other channels? Believe it or not, these questions
are related, well except for the last one, obviously. The impact of stock cars having
fake lights is probably pretty negligible on the TV programming on unrelated stations - unless
there's some incredible butterfly effect that I'm unaware of. But yes, the lights on these cars
are fake. They're literally just decals. This is even referenced in the hit movie Cars where
Lightning McQueen is mocked for having stickers instead of headlights. I'd play the footage,
but it is a Disney movie and the last thing I need is the fucking Mouse breathing down my neck,
litigious rat bastard that he is. So why do these cars have fake lights?
There is a legitimate answer to this, because believe it or not, they do serve a purpose.
First let's look at why the cars don't have real lights, and this is pretty straightforward.
There's simply no need. The racetracks are always illuminated, whether the race takes place during
the day or night. So having lights on the cars, is pointless - especially when you consider the
added weight lights bring to the car. The bulbs themselves, the housing they sit in,
the extra little engineering needed to hold them in place and wire them up.
It's not a lot but at this level of performance it counts, especially when you could use that
weight more efficiently in another part of the car that will actually increase performance.
The most important reason not to have real lights, is safety. Bumping and crashing is just a part of
NASCAR, but bumping into a set of real headlights could put glass on the tracks, and seeing as
there's no time during a race that this could be cleaned up - it means everyone's gonna end up with
shattered glass in their tyres. This could turn even a minor collision into a massive disaster.
So it makes sense that the cars don't have real lights, but why do they bother having fake lights?
What's the point of having a little sticker? I mean when we moved over from the wind-up windows
to the electronic buttons, we didn't start putting on stickers in memory of the wind-up handle.
When we first created the automobile it wasn't covered in stickers to make it look more like
a horse. So what's the deal? The answer to this requires a little more context.
In my video about the NASCAR fistfight that changed racing, I had a bit of a look into
the history of this stock car racing stuff and where it comes from. But basically, stock cars
used to be, well, stock. They were more or less the same car that you saw in the dealership,
at least on the outside, some may have even been straight from the showroom floor.
With NASCAR, this is no longer the case. Over the years, NASCAR has implemented many
rules and regulations that have changed the face of stock-car racing. Many of these rules
and regulations were implemented to try and even up the playing field for all racers, so
that they were all racing in similar conditions. Today, the cars they use must follow a template,
this is basically the skeleton of the car, and the only real variance in the cars is the engine and
the body shell. There's been a few iterations of this template, with NASCAR generally trying
to make it so that the cars out on the track somewhat resemble their "civilian" counterparts,
for want of a better word. At the time of writing the Generation 7 car has just made its debut.
There are just three manufacturers still making cars for NASCAR - Chevrolet,
Ford and Toyota. You'd think they'd each have different looking cars,
but given that that their body shells have to fit the same skeleton and meet the same regulations,
and aerodynamics means there's really just one objectively superior general shape that
fits this skeleton, all three manufacturers end up with cars that look very similar.
To the casual observer, like myself, this is a bit of a clusterfuck. Like are they all
supposed to be driving the same car or not? It's stock car racing, but these are not stock cars,
you can't go out and buy these, they're just supposed to resemble the cars you can buy,
but yet all the manufacturers have to follow the same strict guidelines?
But they're not all selling the same car! Surely the whole reason a manufacturer would
want to make race cars is for brand recognition. And this brings us back to the fake lights.
With manufacturers today having so little freedom in representing their brand in the car's design,
decals are one of the few ways they can differentiate their car.
This includes the headlights. So the headlight stickers a manufacturer uses are made to resemble
the street legal counterpart. The grille is the same. They're just for brand recognition.
The lack of individuality in the cars nowadays is often cited by fans as a reason for the sport's
declining popularity - none of these cars really have an identity of their own, they're all more or
less the same, and none of them have anything in common with the street legal counterparts
they're supposed to represent. It's not like the car you buy from the dealership shares any
parts with the car you see out on the track. The stickers provide most of the resemblance,
and they're merely an illusion. But hey if you're buying a car you'd
probably prefer the one with real features instead of stickers, so this is a rare case
where the thing you see on TV is actually worse than the thing you can actually buy.
Well, unless you take into account the massive performance difference, I suppose.
If you're a NASCAR fan maybe you can tell me in the comments why I'm full of shit, but it
seems to me like a lot of people are similarly confused and alienated by the car guidelines,
so if any of you fans can shed some more light on the whole thing, points you agree
with and/or points where I'm wrong, I'd be happy to hear it. I'd think the casual fan
would enjoy it much more if these cars actually did resemble the ones you see on the roads,
and there were all different cars on the track that were easily distinguishable. It does seem
like they're starting to head back in that direction with the next gen cars, manufacturers
have a bit more freedom to have distinct body shells - so let's see how that goes for them.
If you liked the video, as I mentioned, I have another video about a particular NASCAR race
if you'd like to see that, but I also have a boatload of unrelated videos in the same style.
Like my video on why there are only 25 blimps in the world,
or my video about motorcycle chariot racing. Yep,
that's a thing. I make these videos every week so subscribe if you want to see them as I make them.