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The 2024 schedule keeps getting delayed, and it is causing major headaches for those in and associated with the industry. Let’s take a deep dive into what types of issues the lack of a 2024 schedule causes for the race teams, NASCAR as a whole, and the fans.
The race teams and the drivers have to go through a logistical grind to be a part of NASCAR. For 38 weekends out of the year, they know are going to be somewhere working. With that in mind, it is always nice to know where you will be on certain race weekends.
Race team members, drivers, and everyone in between like to know when they can set aside time to see friends or family in town near certain race tracks. For drivers and team owners, it is nice to know when they will be in towns near sponsorship headquarters or hubs. This allows them to schedule cool sponsor events, meet and greets, etc.
However, the biggest problem is the logistics headache for teams. Taking the NASCAR circus from town to town means taking a bunch of road crew members to a track and finding places to stay, places to eat, and all of those basic things you do on road trips. Except they have to do it every single week, and not knowing where they are will make it impossible for race teams to put together a logistical plan for the entire season.
It is a headache for race teams, and it puts a lot of strain on staff trying to figure out where to lodge crew members for race weekends. The 2024 schedule cannot come soon enough for anyone involved with a race team.
NASCAR fans love to plan where they go for races, myself included. When I was growing up, my dad and I would pick one new race track every year that we would take a trip to, and that was how we took trips to places like Darlington, Bristol, and Martinsville. However, a lot goes into planning which NASCAR races to go to.
First off, you need to make sure it fits in with your schedule when factoring in basic things like work, school, family, and everything else. Fans also have to factor in their own lodging, budgeting food, and even ticket prices. Some fans even plan entire vacations around going to one or more races.
Without the schedule, planning for these events becomes impossible. Oftentimes, the closer to a race date, the harder it is to find affordable lodging near to the race tracks. It becomes a problem the later and later that fans have to wait for the 2024 schedule to be released.
Now, the 2024 schedule being delayed is not just NASCAR being lazy or intentionally delaying it because it is a problem for them as well. The lack of a 2024 schedule presents a major PR problem for NASCAR. It is very difficult to promote your product for next year when there is nothing officially on the docket.
It also presents an issue at the track because it is impossible for tracks to promote fans to buy tickets to the track for next year. Casual fans may not know if NASCAR is coming back to that venue for the next year, and they may not come across whatever promotion that is given to show that NASCAR is coming back to that venue.
It also makes NASCAR look bad from a PR standpoint if the schedule is not released. It brings forward complaints from the fanbase, media members, and those within the industry which NASCAR has to try to fix. it becomes a distraction from the task at hand, which is putting together the 2024 schedule.
The 2024 schedule needs to be released sometime soon to help alleviate some of these issues. It will be released eventually, but will it be released in time for there not to be some of these problems down the road?
