NASCAR COO Brent Dewar highlights positive effects of new Chase format

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Dewar has a unique perspective when it comes to recognizing the progress NASCAR has made over the past year.

After a 30-year career at General Motors, where he retired in 2010 as senior vice president of global Chevrolet, Dewar came to NASCAR a year ago as chief operating officer.

In the past 12 months, Dewar has gotten a first-hand look at the inner workings of a sanctioning body he once viewed from a markedly different perspective as the representative of an OEM.

“Five years ago, when I left General Motors, I met with Brian France, and he talked about his vision of where he wanted the sport to go,” Dewar said Tuesday on the opening day of the NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum presented by SportsBusiness Daily/Global/Journal at the Aria. “And he talked about technology and change and driving new fans and being more open and transparent and things of that nature.

“I remember thinking at the time, ‘Wow! Good luck with that, Brian.’ “I went off and some other things for a few years, and it’s really gratifying to see, five years later, some of the things Brian talked to me about at that lunchtime in New York are really coming to bear.”

Dewar answered a multitude of questions in a session titled “Fireside Chat: A Year in Review and the Plan Moving Forward,” but much of what he addressed was the positive response to the new elimination-style Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format introduced this year.

As Dewar pointed out, this year’s playoff succeeded not only in attracting new fans to the sport but also in recovering what he termed “lapsed fans,” as the buzz around the Chase reached critical mass. In addition, the intensity of the competition in the Chase enhanced the fundamental nature of the competition itself.

“In my first weeks at NASCAR, we were rolling out the concept to the teams,” Dewar said. “Brian France, he was the brainchild of the change… He approached the drivers about ‘Listen, you guys aren’t racing hard enough,’ and a number of them, really, said, ‘That’s not true—we race every weekend, we race to win.’

“And he said, ‘Look, guys, I’m not a race car driver…’ But you take Brian, who’s been around the sport since he was a child, with his father and grandfather, and he felt and saw a difference. And this format really brought that out.”

NASCAR Wire Service
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