Several of NASCAR’s biggest stars performed well during the first season of “NASCAR Drivers 360,” a reality show on FX.
Tony Krantz, one of the two executive producers of the weekly show that follows Cup drivers such as Kevin Harvick, Jamie McMurray, Rusty Wallace and Kenny Wallace through the week leading to the latest race, said he was confident when developing the show that the drivers would handle the scrutiny better than most.
“I think you start with the baseline that NASCAR drivers are public figures under all circumstances,” Krantz said. “They are superstar athletes who are used to being photographed. They have corporate sponsors where they have to show up for various functions. They’re very much in the public eye and perform in front of 150,000 people on a week-in and week-out basis. So they’re used to having cameras in close proximity to them.”
The show will begin its second season May 13 and several drivers, including Kasey Kahne, Mark Martin and Kurt Busch, have been added to the cast.
Krantz said he is proud of the in-depth look the show is able to give fans into the lives of their heroes.
“We’re right there with Kasey Kahne when he’s waking up in his trailer right before the Daytona 500,” Krantz noted. “We’re literally in his trailer while he is waking up, about to go to the bathroom when he first wakes up. You can’t get any more personal, you can’t get any more inside.
“Certain drivers take a little while to get used to it. Other drivers take to it like a duck to water. But, under all circumstances, there is a limitation to how present we can be and not be a nuisance. The drivers let us know and we shut the cameras off at that point and go and come back at a point when it makes more sense to be with them.”
Krantz said the drivers have been very open and very willing to let blemishes show.
“When we first approached Kevin Harvick about participating in the show for the first season, he said, “I just don’t want to be seen in a compromising situation. For example, I don’t want to be seen kicking my dog.’ We laughed and told him we never show that kind of thing if you don’t want it to be shown.
“In the first episode that Kevin participated in, his dog barges in on him when he first wakes up in the morning. He sort of knees the dog a couple of times. He loves his dog and he just knees the dog to get it out of the way. So I laughed about that because in the very first episode, Kevin is kicking his dog.
“Of course, he isn’t doing it with malice. That shows you how far it came because Kevin approved that content. It made him human, it made him real. That’s what I think is so interesting about the show. It creates a real look at who these people are so that we get to know them as people, not just the superstars that they are.”
Sometimes, though, the other people around the drivers are not as comfortable.
“Certain wives and girlfriends of the drivers in the past have indicated a hesitancy because it is an invasion on their privacy,” Krantz said. “They’re not the subject of the show. But that’s how you get a great television show, because you’re there in good times and bad and you’re there when you don’t think the camera is actually recording the action.”
The show, which follows NASCAR Busch Series races shown on FX, started slowly but wound up tripling the average viewers for the time period over the previous year.
“As word of mouth spread about the show, as NASCAR fans found out about the show – because it would play at odd hours and odd times – more and more people starting to come to the show,” Krantz said. “We started to hold a greater and greater percentage of the audience that was watching the Busch race.”
So, how long can a show like this stay fresh and interesting to the public?
“We think it can continue indefinitely,” Krantz said. “We think that there is a different story with every driver each week. We are hoping that the show establishes itself as a companion to all the Busch races that FX carries and it becomes sort of a classic piece of television in the way that the great NFL films are classic pieces of television.”
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FASTER TRACK: Jimmie Johnson has won three of the last four NASCAR Nextel Cup races at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, but it’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon who stole the spotlight this week during testing at the Concord, N.C., track.
Gordon, himself a four-time winner at the suburban Charlotte track, unofficially broke Ryan Newman’s track record of 188.877 mph with a lap of 189.056 on Wednesday night in testing for the May 21 NASCAR All-Star Challenge and the May 29 Coca-Cola 600. Records can be set only in qualifying or during races.
With the track surface ground down in an effort to eliminate some of the bumps, Goodyear has come up with a harder right-side tire. The fast lap by Gordon came as teams worked on long runs, searching for the correct chassis setups to complement the new tires.
“They’ve certainly found something that works very well with this track,” Gordon said about the renovated racing surface. “The corners are just fantastic. Some of the guys have been running more in the middle to higher lines, which is a positive thing. I think it’s a good sign of things to come.”
Martin Truex Jr., the defending Busch Series champion running a part-time Cup schedule, was second to Gordon at 186.464, followed by Greg Biffle at 186.047.
“I was so disappointed when they ground the track,” Biffle said. “I was like, Man, that was a great race track. They shouldn’t have messed with it.’ The bumps gave it character.
“But now I’m just shocked. I’ve never seen grinding a race track do what it did here. It’s just so fast. I’m driving in the second groove, or even the third groove. I’m not running on the bottom, so that tells you there will be side-by-side racing. This is going to be one of the best shows out of all 36 races.”
Others posting fast laps included Mike Bliss at 185.637, Casey Mears at 185.631, Ken Schrader at 185.478, Elliott Sadler at 185.287, Kyle Busch at 185.172, Bobby Hamilton Jr. at 185.084 and Mike Skinner at 184.906.
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STAT OF THE WEEK: Heading into Saturday night’s Dodge Charger 500, Hendrick Motorsports drivers had won 11 races at Darlington Raceway, the most by any team. Hendrick cars had won four of the last five races on NASCAR’s oldest speedway, with three different drivers taking the checkered flag.
Jeff Gordon won the 2002 Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend, Terry Labonte won that race in 2003 and Jimmie Johnson swept both Darlington events last year.
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