Top 5 NASCAR Stories of the Year

This morning while at the gym I caught up on my Racer reading. I was impressed to see an article about Grand-am with a headline "Is This America's Best Race Series?"

This morning I also read a post about the top 5 NASCAR stories from this year—who can resist that. It did mention the fact that JC France has been banned from the Grand-am series. Also the fact that the race tracks have had a hard year, not a surprise.

Here's the part that interested me: TV views of NASCAR were down. It was expected they would go up with less fans getting out to the races but here's what the Fish Wrap had to say:

"Ratings for the Chase dropped from a 3.8 rating to 3.5 from 2008 to 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research. Only a handful of races matched or beat last year's ratings, while most saw significant declines."

Where were the fans? Watching Grand-am, of course. In September Grand-am shared with us that through Miller views of the Rolex races were up 42%, not only that but fan attendance at the races was up 17%. For such a bad year overall, that says a lot about where Grand-am is headed.

Yes, it is America's best series.

Highlight from the 2009 Koni Race at Miller

Check out professional motorsports photographer Wes Dunkel's highlights of the Koni and Mustang Challenge races at Miller here.

There are several great photos of the car and team.