With a new car on the track full time, new names for the top two series, a bevy of former international and open-wheel drivers in the starting field and more drivers from California (seven) than the Carolinas (four), many in NASCAR, fans especially, wonder what's become of the sport they love and what changes may be in store.

They wonder whether NASCAR, as it celebrates its 60th year, is growing too fast, leaving behind many of its loyal, longtime supporters, who began following the sport when most of its drivers and races were concentrated in the South. NASCAR officials have acknowledged that in their efforts to spread the sport to a wider audience, they might have left some of the core crowd behind, and they appear willing to make amends.

Allen Sullivan/AJC (ENLARGE)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a crossover appeal that attracts longtime NASCAR fans as well many people who are relatively new to the sport.

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Country music singers, rarely seen at NASCAR races in recent years, are back on the schedule. TV spots featuring Cup drivers are being used to promote grass-roots racing in America.

And there's no doubt the sport's gotten a boost by the apparent rebound of its biggest star, Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose move this year to the powerful Hendrick Motorsports team appears to have ended a dismal two-year run with his previous team, Dale Earnhardt Inc.

Whatever the reason, TV ratings have been up this year, and the buzz about NASCAR seems to be back.

Front seat to big changes

Few insiders understand where NASCAR has been, where it is and where it may be headed as well as Kyle Petty, driver of the No. 45 Dodge and a third-generation member of one of the sport's founding families. "It's ironic, but where the sport is headed is where [the late former NASCAR chairman] Bill France Jr. always saw the sport headed," Petty said. "It's headed in a direction where owners always hoped and dreamed it would — that it would grow into something where everybody could make a lot of money. Now that it's headed in that direction, everybody's like 'Whoa, I don't want it to go in that direction. I still want it to be blue-collar sport.'

"Be careful what you pray for, because it's all coming true. It's grown to a point where it's a lot more business than it is sport, a lot more business."

Petty said the whole business model of the sport has changed, and that's why the driver line-up now has an international flavor.

"Communities used to have race tracks that were important parts of those communities," he said. All those big tracks had a feeder system of smaller short tracks. Big tracks in Charlotte and Rockingham, N.C., had smaller in-state tracks in Concord, Asheboro and Hickory to develop drivers and fans. Atlanta had its short tracks, too, in Woodstock, Douglasville and Senoia and other outlying towns.

"Those short-track drivers aspired to run the big track," Petty said. "That was the model, especially in the Southeast because the Southeast was left out of professional sports for so many years. You didn't have professional teams, but what you did have was a local dirt track, and that's where your sports heroes came from. You wanted to see David Pearson or Richard Petty go from those local tracks to the big tracks." Today, a new business model exists.

"Now we go straight to Europe and hire drivers and run them in Dallas and Kansas and whatever market we can get," he said. "Now we market race. We market race with [driver] names that just appear, that we have no connection to. Now fans aren't connected with drivers until, boom, it's their rookie year."

The way race teams secure sponsors also is changing, Petty said. "It's [difficult] to find companies to give you $20 million a year, but you can find four or five to give you four or five million apiece," he said.

And those businesses are helping bring in some of the new more casual fans to NASCAR.

"A lot of fans come to races because it's an event," he said. "They might not go out of their way to buy a ticket, but they will go along on a corporate outing."

Junior links old and new

Petty said a lot of fans, new and old, attend because of Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"His fan base is like the Iowa Caucus," Petty said. "His fans caucus other fans to be his fans."

He said a lot of Earnhardt's appeal is that he's the son of the sport's very last driver to come out of the mold that produced the sport's legendary working-class giants such as Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson.

"His father was the last one who could reach out with one hand and grab the brass ring while the other hand was in Kannapolis, N.C, about a foot deep in dirt," Petty said. "[Earnhardt Sr.] never got over that, but you're forced to in the sport today.

"When I was nine years old, 12, 17, I dreamed about being a race driver. I never dreamed about doing commercials, signing autographs and doing all the other stuff that goes with it. My dream was about being a race-car driver. It wasn't to be a media star, but that's what you're forced to do."

Sponsors, he said, are responsible for that. Now a marketable face, perfect hair and bright white teeth are as important as a heavy right foot.

"Companies don't want short, fat bald-headed man pitching their products," he said. "They don't want the typical American guy or girl. They don't want you. It's reverse sexism."

That's something that David Pearson and Dale Earnhardt Sr. never had to face.

"They could always be themselves," Petty said. "Dale Sr. was somehow always able to hold onto that. "There was the line that was broken. Where the sport's headed now, who knows?"