#2, Those road courses make for some pretty amazing classic footage. I recall watching video of the 1965 Motor Trend 500 at Riverside where Gene Davis's #5 Marauder went completely airborne over the chicane in an S-curve and across the grass to maintain his position, and AJ Foyt wiped out his Galaxie in a pretty spectacular wreck at the same race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMt0LhpJGlE
Even without considering the crashes, watching big sloppy family cars slide around the road courses is far more exciting to me than the higher-speed oval tracks. Modern NASCAR is just not that interesting to me, though I must confess I haven't watched any of the road course races in recent years.