It's time for my annual NASCAR post, having seen the best Daytona 500 in my 10 years of watching this sport. Normally, restrictor plate racing isn't great racing, everyone bunched up with at least one "big one" that takes out a dozen cars.
Like many businesses, NASCAR's business has been affected by the weak economy. Many sponsorships dried up and sellouts were no longer a given. A number of ownership mergers and changes led to many layoffs. So what did NASCAR do? Listen to their customers.
They added 10% more horsepower via a larger restrictor plate. They adopted double file restarts. They'll soon return to rear deck spoilers instead of aero wings and shark fins. They aligned the race start times, including this race that normally started later in the afternoon amid all the ceremony. And most of all, they let the drivers race, to police themselves regarding bump drafting.
The result? Daytona sold out and we saw a great race despite a 100 minute red flag break to fix potholes. The customer isn't always right, but we sure did get this one right on the money.
Now if only government would do this, use a slowdown as an opportunity to re-examine what they're doing, to even consider that they might be the problem in many cases. Imagine a school district with escalating costs, flat test scores, and declining enrollments coming to grips with the idea that they must be doing something wrong - and finally willing to take the bold action necessary to fix it.
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