Clearly, Brian France didn’t get the memo.
Everyone knows that mixing sport and politics is a toxic elixir best to be avoided.
They need to be kept at arm’s length. Just look at FIFA.
Yet France, the CEO of NASCAR, decided to play by his own rules – and has been embarrassingly backtracking ever since.
From the moment he endorsed Donald Trump’s highly contentious run for the White House at a rally in Georgia two weeks ago, a sport desperate to take its place in the mainstream has crashed into the barriers.
“You know, I just had a visitor backstage. NASCAR endorsed Trump, can you believe that?” Trump blared this week in North Carolina, the undisputed home offices of racing.
France, clearly revelling in the limelight, talked excitedly about his friend the ‘outsider’, making one of the most controversial pushes for Presidency of the United States the world has ever seen.
He backed Barack Obama in 2008. He also supported Mitt Romney’s campaign of 2012.
Fast-talking politics and fast cars have a history together.
Grandfather Bill France, the founder of NASCAR, was behind Alabama governor George Wallace in the 1960s while race legend Richard Petty famously toasted his 200th win with former US President, Ronald Reagan. So, what’s wrong this time around?
Well, Trump is a different animal, one which has infuriated millions of both left and right minded folk fearing for the future.
His disgraceful views on immigration, which carry heavy racial overtones, have understandably caused outrage by his vile slurs.
From calling Mexican immigrants “rapists and drug dealers” to threatening to proceed with plans to ban Muslims from entering the United States, the billionaire businessman has become the poster child for everything which is wrong in the world.
Trump has been endorsed by similarly reviled figures such as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, while Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has compared his language to that of a vicious dictator in the mold of Benito Mussolini. In other words, siding with him isn’t good for PR.
I’m not supporting him for all of his views, or his immigration views – Brian France
Of course, France said he doesn’t agree with everything, yet at a time when NASCAR attendance is dropping and the sport struggles to bring in new fans, the thumbs up to Trump was only ever going to stir negative emotions.
And, unfortunately for France, the hollow attempt to claw back some respectability by claiming he’s spent millions of dollars on diversity programs aimed at bringing minorities to the track and into the cars doesn’t help his cause.
Indeed, one look at the figures makes it worse. Introduced in 2004, NASCAR’s “Drive For Diversity” programme was aiming to help women break into the sport.
Twelve years on and the results have been disappointing, bordering on pathetic. There’s Asian-American Kyle Larson who’s visited the podium a few times.
Cuban-American Aric Almirola became the third Latino to ever win a top-level NASCAR race.
Though considering the other two – Juan Pablo Montoya and Nelson Piquet Jr. – were both former F1 stars, Almirola stands alone with his hopes of striking a mortal blow for diversity.
Bubba Wallace is the only black driver to have won a race in the last 50 years. No woman has ever crossed the finish line first – only two have ever finished in the top five. The programme was introduced to debunk the myth that despite being a sport with deep roots in the south, which has historically been awash with bigotry and racism, it’s one which welcomes everyone to the party.
France, however, showed where his allegiances rest. And no matter how many NASCAR employees and fans were appalled (France sent a companywide email to apologise), the damage has been done.
“I’m not supporting him for all of his views, or his immigration views,” France said. “I happen to be very enamoured by the excitement he’s brought and the voter turnout that it is creating. I don’t even know all their policies, truthfully.”
So why get involved in the first place?
