There's making a show of good PR, and then there's pure state media. NASCAR's wire service might've tipped from one to the other this week.

If you missed last week's news, NASCAR has announced that its annual race at Watkins Glen will be moved back from May - its slot this year - to September, more in line with history.

This year's May race was met with derision when it was announced in 2025, with fans and locals warning that the weather would likely be bad, and that the camping grounds would be treacherous without any prolonged summer sun to dry them out.

Those warnings were just about on the nose. The rain over the weekend only fell overnight or in the mornings, meaning that all three national series races were held on dry tracks, but the droves of camping fans had a horrible time of things in the already chilly conditions.

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NASCAR cannot expect to be patted on the head for cleaning up its own mess

NASCAR getting out ahead of their mistake, then, and announcing before racing got under way that they've corrected the scheduling situation from 2027 onward? Good, and laudable. Accepting and taking on board criticism, then acting to fix mistakes, is a good thing for any organization to do.

That's why the article put up on the NASCAR wire service this week was so utterly bizarre and divorced from reality. The piece, which went up on the normal media spots tagged 'NEWSWIRE' (headline: 'Watkins Glen date move for 2027 draws wide acclaim') was possibly the single most out-of-touch thing written by anyone actually involved in the sport all year.

"One of the most popular decisions NASCAR has ever made was revealed last week," it begins.

"In fact, the decision was so popular that NASCAR couldn’t wait until the races at Watkins Glen International were over to announce the change."

It continues to bang on about how well received the date change has been, and how brilliant NASCAR is for making it happen, without a shred of introspection about the fact that it's nothing more than NASCAR righting the ship after making a colossal mistake. It's genius to have the race later in the year, it turns out, because the weather's better and it's tourist season! If only someone had known this before moving the race to early May for this year.

How big was the mistake? Well, apparently big enough that fixing it was 'one of the most popular decisions ever' and 'so popular that NASCAR couldn't wait until the races were over to announce it' (note: we've only got a rudimentary understanding of how this game works after a few collective decades in sports media, but we're pretty sure the actual reason NASCAR timed their announcement as they did was to stop the conditions on-site for fans becoming the story of the weekend).

NASCAR has done the equivalent of announcing to the office that you've decided to stop crapping your pants. Everyone's in favour of the decision, obviously, but you were the one who decided to crap you pants in the first place. You don't get credit now for going potty like a big boy.

It's so off-tone for the rest of the Wire Service feed, it's bizarre. The rest of the pieces from the last few weeks are simple - race recaps, some basic quotes pieces, a piece about Austin Dillon visiting Fort Bragg, with some helpful downloadable pictures. More race recaps. Notebooks with collated smaller stories. Not...this.

Have a read of the whole thing on the wonderfully completionist Jayski site, if you have a spare couple of minutes. It is thoroughly worth your time.

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