NASCAR Vice Chairman Mike Helton doesn’t seem to like the way drivers communicate about the issues in NASCAR.
NASCAR Next Gen car has come under much criticism regarding safety in recent days. Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick are the two outspoken drivers in this regard.
And to express their feelings, not just these two drivers, but many others use social media. It seems the easiest and the best way to reach a larger audience.
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Helton seemed a bit critical of this form of communication with the drivers and not coming to NASCAR directly to voice their concerns. He is also of the opinion that communicating in this way doesn’t reveal all the facts of the argument.
“Well, we’ve always had personalities in the sport sometimes it’s different. But you know we’ve got some strong personalities and we’ve listed to everybody and every stakeholder in the sport. We have an open-door policy for it.”
“Most of that works, but every now and then you get for whatever reason it doesn’t work. And so they feel the best way to communicate their issues is not directly with us but through the media, or through digital and social, which is kind of the modern version of the consumption of all of our sports on and off the race track.”
“So we have that, but I think it’s unfair to us knowing that we’re working on this and all these things and we’ll be glad to communicate with the ones that want to do it their way. If they’re sincere and are factual about what they say that’s one thing. But when they say only a part of it and not all the facts along with it, I just don’t think that’s fair for the league and it’s unfortunate.”
Nonetheless. he admitted that it is the “modern-day part of way of communicating”.
From drivers’ perspective, it seems better to make their feelings public as it also encourages the public to add to the concern, which can increase the urgency to address these concerns.