I grew up watching NASCAR predominately, we actually watched pretty much any motorsport but NASCAR was the primary one my dad would have on. My grandad raced cars at Orange County Speedway out in California, my dad grew up watching races at Riverside, nascar, can-am... When I was growing up we had up to three circle track cars as well as a legends car and a few go karts in our garage.
I began to stray away from NASCAR right around 99/2000 right when I watched my first 24hrs at Daytona and Le Mans. I began my disgust for nascar when the whole "world wrestling" type story lines NBC/FOX were shoving in every bodies faces every week began. It felt so tacked on and lame, "Oh no Dale Jr has beef with so and so and they are starting together on the 14th row!" The shit really hit the fan after dale sr died(met him a few time's he was a cunt, I was 7 and 9) the story lines the broadcasters would feed after that would put the lifetime movie channel to shame.
I just wanted to watch good racing, and honestly I'm still the same way, even with F1 I enjoy all the teams and some of the drivers(just like in nascar some of them can be a bit whiny), but in the end I like a good race. Through my time in university I became really interested in strategy and the development game that F1 and Sports cars were going through so that got me into F1 and it really took off with my love for the series. NASCAR was just so stale and conservative I could not stand it and once the car-of-tomorrow with the fast and furious aero coupled with the 1930s truck suspension, carburetors and the same WWE story line's I couldn't stand to watch even 5 minutes of the crap. It just became awful. Thank god my dad wasn't around to see that trash, I think he would have cut and run just like me.
I might watch it again if nascar opens the series up, and lets it breath. I urge the series to take ques from V8 Supercars, change it up add more road courses, lighten the cars, no more tube frames utilize chassis from the show room, do something other than continue with the same old crap.