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USA Today via Reuters

USA Today via Reuters

The words of Joey Logano in a recent episode of SiriusXM NASCAR radio might be igniting a larger haystack in NASCAR. With the Team Penske star’s words about NASCAR drivers already being available for the “spoilt” fans at all times drawing flake from the likes of Carson Hocevar, one more significant insider has now expressed contrasting thoughts. Veteran reporter Jeff Gluck appeared on the YouTube show of former racer Kenny Wallace, where the duo got to discussing a range of topics on the current flow of NASCAR.

Talking about how NASCAR, sponsors and teams have reduced the exposure to drivers a lot today compared to prior times, Gluck detailed his opinions and provided a gist about in which direction he wanted the sport to move.

Jeff Gluck explains the reasons behind the less intense race weekends

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On the show with Kenny Wallace, a key question that the racer had was about the lower number of days that are behind a particular race. Mentioning Daytona in particular, Wallace asked, “The whole Daytona experience is five days long. Used to be 14 days. So, you’re saying maybe we should start getting back to that?”

Answering Wallace, Gluck pointed out two reasons for the reduced time behind a race weekend. The first was that sponsors no longer asked for drivers to be at the race venues days earlier to promote their products. Second, the teams and drivers themselves have now lost interest in having too many race promotion events and track tests before a race. In his words, “The money is flowing in. So everybody’s like getting they can do this. NASCAR, the money sort of flowed out in a way now. It’s stable, but you’ve lost a lot of that need to be there and at the same time, you have the teams going, ‘Save us from ourselves. We don’t want to be testing all the time.’  Now they do have simulators instead so maybe that’s sort of taking the place.”

Continuing to expand on his thoughts, Gluck did acknowledge that fewer days on the road for drivers was certainly a positive considering that it provided them a better work-life balance. But he feared that things were being dialled down back a little bit too much. Drawing comparisons with Formula 1, Gluck continued to lay down his opinion that was against Joey Logano’s.

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Jeff Gluck goes against Joey Logano believing that NASCAR drivers can be doing more for fans

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Talking on SiriusXM last week, Logano’s words were, “To say that we are not accessible is wrong. That is not the case at all. We are very accessible.” Well, not as accessible as Jeff Gluck would like. Though the reporter took an affinity to the lighter workload on drivers he wanted to take a few steps back towards the way things were previously. Talking about the scope of F1 in such matters he detailed how fan forums were a mandate for every single driver every weekend.

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He said, “They’re going over doing all these appearances all over town. When in Vegas, ‘Okay, this guy’s gonna be at the Aria. This guy’s gonna be in the lobby here. And so, you can actually see as those guys are supposed to be. These days in NASCAR I’m not sure I can go into a market and say, ‘All right, where can I see Kyle Busch? Oh, he’s not doing anything this weekend. Oh, darn like that’s my favourite driver.’ I just think there’s a little bit more that can be done there.

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Several demands keep piling up around the NASCAR office with every passing year. With the promotion trying its best to appease fans to provide a richer race experience, the pulse of the consensus as well as the comfort of the drivers are important considerations to be accounted for. Hopefully, we will see the top brass coming out with some routes through which the driver-race-fan synergy can be matched a little bit better.

Read More: Carson Hocevar Goes After Joey Logano for Calling NASCAR Fans “Spoiled” as He Highlights the Hypocrisy of His Comments