Sparks started flying this week leading up to NASCAR’s season-opening Daytona 500, but already low expectations seem to have dampened this year’s edition of stock-car racing’s biggest event.
The sparks came from drivers Paul Menard and Kyle Busch, who both criticized Jimmie Johnson after the seven-time Cup champion caused wrecks in the all-star Clash and in the second qualifying race later in the week. Nobody – on a racing team at least – wants to see twisted metal during speedweeks.
But the races were widely panned as a snooze. Before Johnson and Menard made contact in the Clash last weekend – sending Menard into the wall and Johnson into Victory Lane – the field ran single-file, round and round the 2½-mile oval until the wreck with 20 laps to go.
It was a similar story on Thursday during the second of two qualifying races that set the field for the 500. Again, drivers lined up and turned 59 disciplined laps – minus a Kyle Busch spinout caused by Johnson – before reigning Cup champion Joey Logano made a last-lap move jumping from fourth to the lead to win it.
Does this mean we should expect a single-file friendly on Sunday? Not necessarily. While there are obvious incentives to winning exhibition races (cash and grid position among them) during speedweeks, the main goal is to keep the car healthy for the showcase.
Some drivers and teams might carry that same attitude into the first two stages (60 laps each), while others may try to snag early-season playoff points by winning stages. Martin Truex Jr. paved his path to the 2017 Cup title in playoff points, demonstrating how important stage wins are in the modern format.
Predictions are hardly worth doing for this race because it tends to produce surprise winners. At times, it has come down simply to who emerges from the inevitable big wreck that will take out a portion of the field.
That’s the unpredictability of restrictor-plate racing. As these machines push 200 mph down the backstretch, the track might as well be a sheet of ice somehow surviving under the hot Florida sun. All it takes is a whisper of displaced air to push a competing car’s nose off-center and send it spinning into the wall or a host of other drivers. Usually it’s both.
NASCAR brass will certainly hope that Sunday’s race draws more eyeballs than it has in the recent past, but it likely won’t. Sports fans have changed their television-watching habits, and the numbers don’t always tell the whole story. That being said, the sport has certainly lost the attention it had some 12 years ago when it was considered the fastest growing sport in the nation.
In the past, it’s been frustrating to hear NASCAR’s leadership side-step questions about the how the sport will overcome waning relevance in the modern arena of mainstream sports entertainment. But in an in-depth interview with the Daytona Beach News-Journal this week, NASCAR’s new president Steve Phelps told the newspaper, “We probably lost our way” as the auto racing body pursued building new tracks in new places while trying to draw in new fans.
“I think we were trying to search for that next-generation fan … and I don’t think we listened to what the hardcore fan wanted,” Phelps told the newspaper. “Those days have ended.”
Does this mean NASCAR will spin a 180 and try to woo back the fans that sold out tracks in the early part of the century?
We know the answer to that about as well as we know who Sunday’s winner will be.
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321, [email protected] or on Twitter
@NickStoico.)
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