France family divides and conquers to own the world

The conspiracy theory is as such – there are too many forms of racing in the USA and the rumored goal of the France Family is to take control of all racing in the USA and to eventually do away with most forms so that Americans think of racing as stadium style oval track stock car racing. As it is today the many forms of racing divides the potential fan base and hence limits the France family and their NASCAR series from maximizing profits.

Their thought, so the conspiracy theory goes, is that other sports do not vary much and the playing field and equipment is the same from event to event. Football fields are all 100 yards long. Every soccer field is the same size. Ditto for basketball and baseball. Each stick-and-ball sport uses common equipment and common fields. In racing there are different types of playing fields, both short and long (ovals – dirt and paved, road courses, street courses, drag strips, off-road, etc), and different equipment used (open wheel, stock car, sports cars, dragsters, etc.). This all confuses the casual fan, and divides where they spend their money.

As examples of their most recent divide and conquer tactics – The new USAC Speedway sprint car is driven behind the scenes by the France family and the new National Sprint Car league has France family written all over it with the Petty family as front men.

In the case of USAC, the new Speedway cars have created a split in the series with many team owners refusing to buy the new cars and will instead take their existing equipment to another series.

In the World of outlaws twelve drivers have gone with the new National SprintCar League – Steve Kinser, Danny Lasoski, Kraig Kinser, Tim Shaffer, Paul McMahan, Jason Meyers, Joey Saldana, Jason Sides, Brian Paulus, Brandon Wimmer, Shane Stewart, and Jason Solwold. All have signed three-year contracts with the National SprintCar League.

Instead of a unanimous move, several key drivers have elected to continue racing with DIRT MotorSports (existing WoO), namely Donny Schatz, Craig Dollansky, Terry McCarl, Daryn Pittman and Brooke Tatnell.

It too is a split in a sport that has already seen car counts steadily decline over the past several years at many venues.

See the trend here? And it all has France family influence behind it, for a real divide and conquer coup de grace:

• IRL formed to divide and conquer CART/Indy Car racing
• USAC Speedway cars introduced to divide and conquer USAC sprint car racing so the teams and drivers can run on NASCAR High-banked Superspeedways
• National Sprint Car League formed to divide and conquer WoO
• Grand-Am formed to divide and conquer ALMS and sports car racing

Their end game – NASCAR is racing. Period. Crazy you say? Think again.