Does NASCAR need a bailout, with its Big Three automaker sponsors facing tough economic times? As sportswriter and producer Robert Weintraub puts it in Slate, “…even if Ford, GM, and Chrysler get the cash they want from the taxpayers, they are going to have to pull back heaps of sponsorship dough from stock-car racing.” Weintraub, a fan of the sport who has produced a television show about it, says that now “is the right time to put the sport out of its misery.”

Why? Well, for one thing, today’s drivers lack the rodomontade of yesterday's drivers. Weintraub writes, “…the most visible part of NASCAR, the driver corps, has morphed from a crew of heroic-yet-relatable, older, mostly mustachioed hell-raisers to an interchangeable posse of corporate-ready drones fresh out of driver's ed.” Yikes, today’s drivers might as well sit in cubicles and operate NASCAR simulators.

But the bottom line, Weintraub says, is, “The sport can't escape the fact that the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels are technologies on a steep downslope. With hybrids and electrics on the way in, it's hard to see where gas-guzzling, emission-belching stock cars fit in. Unlike the Indy Racing League and Formula 1…NASCAR has yet to implement alternative-fuel programs—hell, it only switched to unleaded gasoline last season!”

What do you think? Can NASCAR continue as it is, can it switch to alternative power sources, or is Weintraub right?