Picture this: it's 1998, and Dale Earnhardt has just conquered the Daytona 500 for the first time in 20 tries. This man with a handlebar mustache and a "screw-it" attitude who has dominated the sport of NASCAR for years, including winning seven championships, finally conquered the track that had cursed him for 20 years. From tires going down on the last lap to a seagull ruining his car to numerous second place finishes, the Daytona spring race, long considered the biggest race in NASCAR, had done everything in its power to stop Dale Earnhardt from winning a Daytona 500.
For reference, Earnhardt won ten times at Talladega Superspeedway, the other restrictor-plate track on the NASCAR Winston Cup Series circuit. Earnhardt also had two wins at Daytona’s night race, the Firecracker 400, as well as six wins in the Busch Clash, a non-points exhibition race in which many of NASCAR’s top stars competed yearly, and an unmatched 12 victories in the Daytona 500 qualifying races, known as the Gatorade Duels (including an incredible ten straight victories from 1990 to 1999). In short, Earnhardt was good at restrictor-plate racing, winning 32 times in his 22 full-time campaigns, but it took him 20 tries to win the Daytona 500.
Earnhardt was also super likable due to his blue-collar mentality. He wasn’t always appreciated by fans (for example, at Bristol in 1999 he was soundly booed for wrecking Terry Labonte in an attempt to win – but he only meant to rattle Labonte’s cage), but his attitude combined with his incredible toughness, surviving numerous wrecks no mortal should have been able to and driving despite having broken bones and injuries, endeared him to fans. It helped that Earnhardt was in the right place at the right time – NASCAR’s popularity was soaring during the late 90s due to a combination of factors, including Days of Thunder, a racing movie which grossed over 150 million dollars in theaters, relatable drivers, sponsors which fans recognized and used daily, and the rise of ESPN, a network which helped NASCAR reach new heights during a time when cable television was exploding into new markets.
Meanwhile, Earnhardt had a new threat rising: Jeff Gordon. Gordon won his first of four championships in 1995, but really started to dominate in 1996, winning ten races that year, as well as ten in 1997 and 13 in 1998. 33 of Gordon’s 93 victories were scored in a 96-race span, meaning Gordon was winning races at a clip of once every three races. Gordon was a villain in the 90s. The fans hated his success, and generally, Gordon was squeaky-clean. This is a time in history where The Simpsons, The Ren and Stimpy Show, and Beavis and Butthead were very popular. In short, people liked crude humor and edgy characters, and this was reflected in the professional wrestling scene at the time, where ECW was gaining a cult following because of it being geared towards a mature audience, and the WWF would soon follow ECW down that path, though to a lesser extent. Basically, the fans preferred Earnhardt over Gordon because they didn’t want to see a clean hero – they wanted antiheroes and blue-collar stars.
Earnhardt was the antihero in this scenario – he would do about anything to win, even if it was controversial. Gordon was the boring guy, the antagonist made such by NASCAR audiences. There were more stars in the 90s scene for sure – Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, Terry Labonte, Rusty Wallace, Sterling Marlin, Mark Martin, and most popular driver Bill Elliott come to mind – but none captured the hearts and minds of fans like Earnhardt and Gordon. That’s not to say those other drivers weren’t great, but there was only one Dale Earnhardt and only one Jeff Gordon.
Fast-forward to 2001 for a moment. Dale Earnhardt was tragically killed in a last-lap accident. Earnhardt was blocking from third place at the time of his crash – first and second place were Michael Waltrip and Sr.’s son, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., both of whom raced for Dale Sr.’s race team, Dale Earnhardt, Inc. Dale’s crash looked surprisingly ordinary, a routine crash where Earnhardt was sent careening head-first into the wall. The crash was definitely a hard one, but Earnhardt had been through violent flips and crashes that looked much scarier than this one. That said, Earnhardt hit head-on, wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and was wearing a helmet that didn’t cover his full face despite strong recommendations from people involved in the sport that he should switch to the much safer HANS device, which had been implemented due to the deaths of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin, Jr., two promising drivers who passed in a two-month span at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The device likely would have saved Dale Sr.’s life.
After the death of Dale Earnhardt, his son became NASCAR’s most popular driver. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had an admirable career in which he scored 25 Cup Series wins and had a couple of championship runs – runs which came just short (3rd in 2003, 5th in 2004, 2006, and 2013). He did not live up to the impossible expectations set by being the son of one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history, but he had a respectable, Hall of Fame-worthy career. Dale Jr. continues to have an impact on the sport today, running a very successful, championship-winning NASCAR Xfinity Series team (the second-tier of NASCAR where a lot of drivers develop and become Cup-ready). He also is a color commentator for NBC Sports, where he gained near-instant recognition for his call in July 2018 for saying “Slide job! Slide job!” in a very passionate manner. Dale Jr. has even expressed interest in taking his team to the Cup Series, but due to the current financial model nothing has come of that as of yet.
That said, the rest of the sport was hit massively during The Great Recession. From 2007 to 2009, numerous teams folded or found mergers due to having major issues finding sponsorship, and even 15 years after that, NASCAR still hasn’t fully recovered. Week to week, very few cars have one title sponsor for the entire year, let alone half the year. Driver marketability isn’t what it once was, partially due to the lack of significant personalities and partially due to a disinterest in the sport. Races used to sell out; now they’re lucky to sell half their seats. The COVID-19 pandemic worsened this, but there have been a few signs of recovery in 2022. Eight races sold out all of their seats, including the Martinsville fall race, which sold out for the first time since 2006.
But more importantly, there is hope for the sport for the first time in a decade due to the rise of a new crop of drivers who have shown talent and personality in spades. Chase Elliott, NASCAR’s most popular driver and the son of former Cup champion and 16-time most popular driver award winner Bill Elliott, is a legitimate championship threat yearly. Chase won the 2020 Cup Series championship and has won the most popular driver award 4 times in a row (likely 5 after this year). Ryan Blaney, son of former mid-tier Cup driver and successful World of Outlaws driver Dave Blaney, has shown a good amount of skill, winning 7 races in his first 7 seasons and being a perennial championship threat. Noah Gragson, a young up-and-coming driver in the aforementioned Xfinity Series, has shown the potential to win championships and is a very blunt, brash competitor who will say whatever’s on his mind. Other honorable mentions of this young class of up-and-coming drivers include Bubba Wallace, a polarizing driver who also happens to be the first African-American driver to win a Cup Series race since Wendell Scott in 1963, Tyler Reddick, who has shown incredible ability behind the wheel and has a very clean, likeable personality, and Christopher Bell, who is known for incredible consistency and a rarely-matched nose for clutch moments, among others.
But no one has shown the ability to anger fans like 2023 Rookie of the Year Cup Series driver and grandson of Cup Series owner Joe Gibbs, Ty Gibbs. NASCAR fans notably hate who they perceive to be silver-spoon kids. For instance, when Austin Dillon, grandson of Richard Childress, took over the number 3 car for Dale Earnhardt, Sr. 13 years after his death in 2014, fans were outraged because they felt like Dillon had done nothing to earn the right to drive that number, a sentiment that many fans still hold to this day (NASCAR doesn’t retire numbers).
That said, Ty Gibbs has a very rare combination of things working against him. For one, he’s the grandson of Joe Gibbs, meaning that by default, many people think he’s in the car because of that fact alone (which is far from true) and that he will have everything handed to him. Secondly, Ty is replacing controversial but popular driver Kyle Busch in the number 18 car in 2023. Busch, a former 2-time cup series champion, has won more than 200 times in NASCAR’s top three divisions, making him one of, if not the most successful driver in NASCAR history. Busch moves to Richard Childress Racing in 2023, a move which paved the way for Gibbs to take over the 18, and many fans blame Joe Gibbs for not putting the effort in to re-sign Kyle Busch as much as he could have.
Thirdly, Ty Gibbs has a penchant for wrecking people and then saying dumb things afterwards. The most recent occurrence of this happened when Ty Gibbs put teammate Brandon Jones into the wall to win the most recent Xfinity Series race at Martinsville, and then proceeded to compare himself to Jesus. NASCAR has a notable fanbase in the southeastern United States, which is considered to be a very religious area, so this did not go over well with many fans whatsoever. As such, Ty Gibbs is the villain, but in a different sense than Jeff Gordon was in the 90s – Ty Gibbs is talented, but also makes a lot of egregious decisions that are not only unpopular, but head-scratching.
On the flip side of the coin, we have seventh-generation watermelon farmer Ross Chastain. Chastain grew up in Florida playing NASCAR video games and farming – a very relatable driver to NASCAR’s fanbase. Chastain started racing at the age of 12, doing so because he thought his father racing as a hobby was cool. Chastain’s talent was always evident, but he had a penchant for making other drivers mad himself. In fact, this came to a head at the World Wide Technology Raceway in 2022, where Chastain angered Denny Hamlin. Hamlin proceeded to purposely try to block Chastain all the way to the apron of the racetrack and would make it extremely hard to get around him. This was because Hamlin was unhappy with Chastain – Chastain had rear-ended him earlier in the race. In the same race, Chastain also spun out Chase Elliott. Elliott responded by squeezing Chastain against the wall. This led to a lot of angry fans to call wrecks Chastain cause “Chastaining”.
That said, the talent of Chastain has far exceeded these negative moments. In March at Circuit of the Americas in a hard battle with road course specialist A.J. Allmendinger for the win, Chastain sent Allmendinger into Alex Bowman, the third-place driver at the time, like the que ball in pool being sent into the 8 ball, and won the race outright for his first career Cup Series win. He followed that up with a second victory at Talladega, somehow surviving last-lap pandemonium. But Chastain’s biggest moment came at Martinsville in the Cup Series race, where realizing he was in danger of failing to advance to NASCAR’s championship race at Phoenix, he sped up and rode the wall halfway around the track, somehow managing to gain just enough points to advance to the Championship 4. This move has gone viral and has given NASCAR a taste of social media popularity that it has never seen before.
Because of this, Ross Chastain is likely to become a household name in NASCAR. He has a great chance to win the championship this weekend, but even if he doesn’t, he is now set up to become NASCAR’s newest antihero. But in addition to Chastain’s skill, he also has shown a strong personality. In 2019, after sponsor DC Solar was raided by the FBI, Chastain was nearly forced to quit NASCAR since he hadn’t been able to draw much sponsorship money, which should resonate with blue-collar fans in itself. Chastain also won a truck series race in 2019 at Iowa, was handed 50,000 dollars as part of a NASCAR promotion, was disqualified a couple of days later, then proceeded to win at World Wide Technology Raceway the next week. In his post-race interview, he made reference to the disqualification, then said “No one’s taking this away from me” in reference to his second 50,000-dollar bonus in as many races. Chastain is also known for his trademark winning celebration, where he smashes a watermelon into the ground.
Chastain and Gibbs will likely at some point cross paths in the Cup Series in some manner, and it’ll be interesting to see the fan reaction to these drivers going forward, especially if Chastain were to dump Gibbs in a future race. Chastain and Gibbs compare favorably to another rivalry from the late 2000s and early 2010s, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Kyle Busch. Busch has always been controversial, but in that period, he wrecked Dale Jr. during a race Jr. was sure to win. Because of this, the crowd was incredibly angry, and when Dale Jr. retaliated several weeks later, the crowd’s cheers were deafening.
More importantly than that, due to social media, many first-time NASCAR fans will likely be tuning into the race at Phoenix due to the clip of Chastain’s “Hail Melon” going viral. Fans will be looking to see if Chastain pulls off something else insane, and it’s unlikely there’s a second wall ride coming, but Chastain’s talent may keep a good amount of those fans. If that happens, NASCAR will benefit from the positive momentum for the first time in a long time. This also conveniently comes at a great time for NASCAR, as they go to Chicago for their first-ever street course race in July 2023 in a much-anticipated event, and they go to Phoenix next week for what could be Chastain’s crowning moment.
This also comes at a crucial time for NASCAR as a sanctioning body, though. For years, NASCAR fans have been turned off by changes to safety, the playoff system, and leaving popular tracks. Because of this, NASCAR’s fanbase has generally been dwindling. NASCAR’s fanbase already skews older, but with the move Chastain pulled off going viral, Chastain has the potential to draw in the 13-18 and 18-30 demographics, which would be huge for NASCAR if it happens. Ross Chastain could end up being the best thing to happen to NASCAR if the sport capitalizes, and Chastain has the potential to become the first real blue-collar favorite in the sport since Dale Earnhardt, Sr. himself roamed the earth. As such, this has the chance to become a boom period for America’s number one motorsport.