Readers get the (drive) shaft in motorsports coverage

In mid-August, the U.S.'s premier auto racing sport will compete at a road racing course in Watkins Glen, NY. NASCAR's brutish Cup series cars will race in this rural community Aug. 20. 

May 2023, Charlotte Motor Speedway.
(c) DKassnoff, 2023.

But, don't expect The New York Times to cover NASCAR before then. The newspaper's sports section -- now outsourced to The Athletic, its sportsbook subsidiary -- hasn't covered NASCAR since July 2. That's when NASCAR's drivers competed on the rain-soaked streets of Chicago. The Times provided no coverage of their July 30 race in Richmond, VA, or any NASCAR race since early July.

The Times has focused its motorsports coverage on Formula 1 racing. These are the expensive, open-wheeled, high performance racing teams once called Grand Prix. This class of racing is controlled by another media company: John Malone's Liberty Media, which purchased Formula 1 in 2017 and returned it to profitability.

Visit the Times' sports pages, and you'll find abundant coverage of F1, including a new motion picture starring Brad Pitt as a veteran racer, now in production. No coverage of NASCAR, and since February, no IndyCar (the racing series built around the fabled Indianapolis 500). 

There's no clear rationale for eschewing coverage of major U.S. motorsports, while devoting reporting resources to a global racing series with just three races held in the U.S. (Miami, Austin, TX., and Las Vegas). Or is the decision driven not by winning drivers, but by advertising preferences?

Both F1 and NASCAR attract deep-pocketed sponsors. NASCAR's include Busch Beer, Goodyear tires, Pennzoil lubricants, and Coca Cola. F1's list of partners include Rolex watches, Heineken beer, Alpha Tauri apparel, and Qatar Airways -- arguably upmarket global brands. 

You can walk into a store and buy many NASCAR sponsors' products with cash in your wallet. Can you say the same about F1's partners' products (exception: Heineken)? 

Truth is, most auto racing is dependent on sponsors' dollars. Teams that fail to replace a lost sponsor are soon out of business. The Times' advertising executives may not influence its sports coverage. But their target readers likely favor Heineken over Busch beer, just as F1 does. 

Full disclosure: I worked on PR and media relations for Kodak's NASCAR program in the 1990s and 2000s (which ended years ago). I'm more a fan of NASCAR than F1. And, I drink domestic beers, mostly.

But my favorite racing-themed ad campaign isn't a NASCAR-related ad. It's a Heineken spot, shown below. It works beautifully. 

Let's say the New York Times' favoring Formula 1 over NASCAR has a business motive. But it short-changes thousands of fans who'll find scant coverage of NASCAR in the Times or on its website.