 Credit: DARLINGTON, SOUTH CAROLINA - SEPTEMBER 03: Bubba Wallace, driver of the #23 McDonald's Toyota, exits pit road during the NASCAR Cup Series Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on September 03, 2023 in Darlington, South Carolina. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images) Fans for several years now have hated the very idea of Wallace in the sport. Now naturally this stems from 35,000 different reasons that each individual fan will explain to you in nauseum on why they hate the guy. Wallace took Rowdy's place as the most "hated" driver in the sport roughly about the time of the Talladega race in 2020. (I'm not going into this as we all know the who, what, when and where.)
But of course, Wallace has a TON of racist haters who don't even try to hide why they dislike him on social media. You've got the racists, the "But Muh Flag" crowd, the "he tried to murder Larson" crowd, the "he's a crybaby" crowd, the noose crowd and so on and so forth. So, with all of this hatred, why is it that we see Mr. Bubba Wallace plastered all over social media or NASCAR media? It's actually such a super simple answer and it stuns me that more people don't understand it. A lot of people site that NASCAR is trying to "jam him down our throats" and, well, yeah. They look at the numbers, and this quick article will tell you exactly why that is. It is all stemmed to 1 word "Media." Media is all about 1 thing, attention. With social media and websites it's all about getting the most Engagements (people liking, emojis or sharing), the most impressions (how many people see the content, due to the algorithms it's the stuff that gets the most engagements that gets seen the most) and lastly and most importantly (to us with a website), the most website visits. Here's the thing, most of us really don't care if the responses are positive or negative as long as it is bringing in the eyeballs. Where are we going to get the most attention? Prime example, I wrote an article and did a sit down interview with Howie DiSavino III a few months back. Everyone said I did a pretty good job at it despite it being my first time doing so. Less than 100 people even liked the posts much less opened or read it. Now to the opposite, I can go onto any Facebook NASCAR Page and simply post "Bubba Wallace." I'll receive 200 angry Emojis, 100 laughing emojis and anywhere between 20-50+ negative comments. No information shared, no picture, not 1 word.. just his name. And I have, I've done this dozens of times just to test the waters, and god forbid I say something positive about the man. (224 angry emojis just for posting a pic of him and his new wife saying congratulations.) So, to me, someone who needs to look at the total number of impressions and engagements per post you'd think this would be all I post. Well, at Seriously Fast Media we refuse to do click-bait so we don't. So why? Why do we constantly see Wallace everywhere? The answer is super simple thanks to the haters, It gets impressions... and it gets engagements. They are single handedly fueling what they dislike seeing. To make my point more clear, majority of the comments or engagements will come from people who wouldn't even open this. Now on top of what I’ve personally seen, I’ve chatted about and joked about this with the editors and online directors of several online publications as well as YouTubers and Facebook Page and Group admins. Even though we would laugh, they all backed my observations. Now on top of this, Wallace is loved by his fans, he is loved by his sponsors and he is loved by much of his competition. Plus, he is a fantastic ambassador for the sport into the black community. None of that hurts much either. By: Tom Luttermoser Image Credit: 23XI Racing
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 By: Tom Luttermoser Image: RCR
Running around Twitter all morning has been the question, Does winning the Daytona 500 define a drivers legacy? Does it? With a race that takes as much luck as it does skill, it's a great question. The Harley J. Earl trophy is easily the most iconic trophy in the sports history and there is not one single driver you can talk to who would say it would not be a defining moment in their lives to have won it. But does it really mean that much to a drivers career? Yes and No are both answers I've seen across Twitter today. Some drivers biggest or even their only accomplishment may be to have won the Daytona 500. It locks you into the sport's history and memories of the fans. Trevor Bayne and Michael McDowell's only wins in the Cup Series both came at the Daytona 500, yet they are memorialized into the history books as Daytona 500 Champions. Michael Waltrip is pretty much only known for winning 2 Daytona 500s including his first win in the Cup Series on that fateful day in 2001. Yet you can go to the other end of the spectrum and look at names such as Petty or Johnson, 7 championships and nearly 300 wins between the two, and that is what they are known for. You typically don't think of them for their Daytona 500 victories, even though Petty won 7 of them. Another instance of a different take is the late Dale Earnhardt, a 7 time champion of the sport and arguably the most iconic moment of his entire career came in February of 1998 at that legendary speedway. "20 years of trying, 20 years of frustration, Dale Earnhardt will come to the caution flag to WIN the Daytona 500! Finally!" My personal opinion, it very well can. As stated above, it can be THE moment of a career or it can be the only moment of a career. In my opinion. It either is or it isn't going to define the driver based entirely on the individual driver. So now I ask you, What do you think. Does it define a driver's career? |