I followed NASCAR pretty closely for a few years, although I have to admit I didn’t pay real close attention to it until after the CART/IRL split (for most of the ‘80s and ‘90s I was a pretty big fan of CART). But then they decided to introduce the Chase, the “lucky dog” rule, the green-white-checkered rule...
I liked NASCAR a lot better when it was a racing series. Between all the silliness in NASCAR and the ongoing drama between CART/ChampCar and IRL, in the last ten years I’ve become a big fan of sports car racing. And I still follow F1 as much as I can given that it switched to ANOTHER cable channel that isn’t part of the package I subscribe to.
Now, I'm interested just from knowing some of the people involved and some of the personalities. You'd be surprised who you might run into day to day around here.
To NASCAR's credit, it's still not like it used to be, but the racing has gotten a bit better with this new generation car compared to the previous since the COT was introduced. Without a doubt, the driver protection and safety of these cars is amazing.