Technology allows anyone to act as a motorsports journalist now. Nor does today s fan wait for hard news a month, a week, a day or even an hour after it happens. Within seconds of a press conference the fan has website reports and more often now tunes in to the actual press conferences live. In the old days, it was a chore to find out how his driver did, if he didn t win. Now even the 40th-place driver s website gives the fan all the particulars from a race weekend.
Life is even easier for the modern fan.
No more trips to the track to buy a souvenir. Instead, he can order a new hat or shirt over the Internet during a commercial or even order his tickets for the next race. The smart media and sanctioning bodies are adapting to the new fan power, and they will only benefit from the interest created by this information revolution. No doubt, the future will bring even more innovation and probably give fans even more power. Predicting where technology will take us is usually useless, but I suspect those grocery store conversations will grow more detailed as every year passes.