(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
A new year is upon us, and with it comes a wealth of stories and opportunities for the stars of the NASCAR Cup Series.
There are going to be numerous things to track in what’s being marketed as the “Best Season Ever” – schedule shifts, new and familiar faces. Virtual racing. Dirt racing. Shoot, even virtual dirt racing.
Here are five of the key storylines for the 2021 season.
1. Road course rampage
The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season kicked off in traditional fashion with the running of the Busch Clash on Tuesday, but the race couldn’t have been much different from the usual fair. Held on Daytona International Speedway’s road course, the 35-lap event traded tight packs and chaotic crashes for chicanes, curbing and heavy braking.
It caused a mixed reaction from fans, with some preferring tradition on the oval and others embracing what played out to be an entertaining race by most standards.
That’s almost fitting given the year ahead, because it’s a sign of things to come.
Road courses will play an increased role in determining a champion this season, with seven points-paying races. That’s more than the Cup Series field has ran in the past two seasons combined (five) and just a shade under 20% of the full 2021 campaign. Tracks like Road America, Circuit of the Americas and Daytona’s road course layout have been added, while Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s annual date is shifting from the oval layout to its grand prix circuit.
Only one of those road courses (the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval) falls in the playoffs. But with playoff points, postseason berths and regular season positioning up for grabs, teams will be forced to take those seven races seriously.
If any competitor can stand apart from the rest in these seven events, they can earn a playoff point cushion that could help carry them all the way to Phoenix Raceway and a Championship 4 berth this fall.
That’s potentially bad news for the field, because one driver has already done that in the past year – defending champion Chase Elliott. Throw out his loss in Tuesday’s Busch Clash, where he was in the battle for the win in the final corner before his contact with Ryan Blaney let Kyle Busch slip by for the victory, and Elliott has four-consecutive road course wins at the Cup level. His 8.9 average finish on the tracks tops heralded road course aces like Tony Stewart (10.9) and Jeff Gordon (13.0).
Whether it’s Elliott or someone else, the field will all be fighting for a chance at road course supremacy this year.
NASCAR will have to hope that the battle is entertaining. With road courses now taking up a significant portion of the schedule, their success (or failure) will drive a lot of the sport’s momentum through the regular season.
2. Getting dirty
Tuesday’s Busch Clash also brought a surprising preview of another kind, thanks to the consistent precipitation in the area over the past month – dirt.
Drivers rolling through the bus stop chicane on the backstretch were forced through a treacherous area after a few of their colleagues missed the curb on the inside part of the chicane and drove through the mud, tracking it into the racing surface. That made the section slick and unpredictable, causing a pair of spins from Chris Buescher and race leader Martin Truex Jr. at different stages of the event. Kevin Harvick also did some agricultural driving at the exit of the chicane after rolling through mud.
As the field complained of excessive dirt and lack of grip, knowledgeable fans couldn’t help but chuckle. That’s because in its own way the Busch Clash foreshadowed this spring’s trip to Bristol Motor Speedway.
In the biggest curveball of a wildly different 2021 calendar, the first of two trips to Bristol on March 28 will see the field run on dirt. The track is already being prepared for what should be one of the longest dirt oval races ever – a 250-lap Cup race totaling 133.25 miles that’s likely to see the track rubber up significantly.
As proven by Eldora Speedway’s Camping World Truck Series races from 2013 through 2019, there’s a chance for this race to go quite well. But there’s also a risk that the race could go terribly wrong.
The heavy stock cars of NASCAR are uniquely challenging and slow to drive on dirt, while many of the drivers have little-to-no experience. With a playoff berth up for grabs, this will be a wild card event that should see underdog contenders attempting to punch above their weight.
Some drivers have already begun dabbling in dirt to prepare. Kurt Busch recently completed laps in a dirt modified at Friendship Motor Speedway. Joey Logano participated in a UMP modified race at Volusia Speedway Park over the weekend. Chase Elliott ran the Chili Bowl and has competed with USAC in the past week.
But even with preparation, there are quite a few variables going into this race.
Will the track hold up to 250 laps of action? What about the cars? Can the Cup Series field adapt to the circumstances and put on a compelling show? Could a surprise winner pop up and knock a stronger contender on the year out of the playoffs?
Time will tell, but regardless this is a gamble from NASCAR that will be uniquely intriguing to follow.
3. Stepping into the Next Gen
NASCAR’s changes aren’t just limited to the schedule. The Next Gen car is planned for a rollout at the start of the 2022 season.
That makes this year critical for the sport’s racing future, as final tweaks and decisions are made in advance of the car’s debut.
The Gen 6 car launched to much fanfare in 2013, but delivered a somewhat dull first year before succeeding to provide a thrilling first season of the elimination playoff in 2014. History would tell you that similar struggles may come with the Next Gen car’s launch, but with the sport currently riding a wave of momentum there’s much to be gained if it doesn’t.
Despite being so close to competing, there’s still much we don’t know about the new cars planned for use at NASCAR’s top level. But there are a few key points to remember.
The machine is essentially a spec car, which makes it critical for part suppliers to hit any necessary deadlines ahead of the launch. Each OEM will unveil their unique body styles sometime over the year. While the NA18D-style package utilized full-time in 2019 has been scaled back over the past two years, it stands to reason that some aspects of the car could make their way over to the new car.
Consider this a developing story. It will come and go in waves, jumping into the forefront as announcements are made and then running along in the background at other times. But despite not being a top focus year-round, the Next Gen car will be a critical piece of NASCAR’s future – for better or worse.
4. Big names in new places
The 2020 silly season ranks among the most interesting ones to follow in recent years, due as much to factors outside of the cockpit than results in them.
Two of the biggest names of the year were Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson. One of them (Larson) was expected to be a big story from the jump. The other (Wallace) was more of a background piece until events around the world thrust him into the spotlight.
Now out of the silly season picture and into their new rides, both Wallace and Larson will be drivers to follow this year as they look to make good on their new opportunities.
Wallace is arguably the sport’s most popular driver now, becoming one of NASCAR’s biggest names after showing acts of support for Black Lives Matter and the anti-racism sentiment that led headlines in the United States last summer. He’s driving for the newly formed 23XI Racing, owned by National Basketball Association legend Michael Jordan and fellow driver Denny Hamlin. The first brings significant mainstream appeal to the sport, while the latter adds intrigue for diehard NASCAR fans eager to see how an active competitor fairs in the ownership game.
Jordan isn’t the only notable name entering into Cup team ownership this year. Music icon Pitbull has also made his way into the NASCAR ranks, working with former driver Justin Marks to form Trackhouse Racing. The group will field Daniel Suarez in the No 99 this season.
Both teams (and drivers) figure to play a role in NASCAR’s greater push toward diversity and inclusion, kicked off last year with support of Wallace and the banning of the Confederate flag at races. It’s too early to tell how well either team will perform, but they at least showed a glimmer of promise in Daytona 500 qualifying. Wallace slotted in fourth to lead all Toyotas, while Suarez was a comfortable 10th on the charts.
Larson re-enters the sport after a significant career shakeup. He was sent to the dirt ranks full-time last summer after his Twitch incident, dominating stretches of the year in various cars while working with the Sanneh Foundation and attempting to atone for his mistake away from the track.
Those efforts proved fruitful enough to gain the Californian support to return to NASCAR. He wound up in the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports, a ride that he was on the short list for prior to his transgression. But he now enters the team as a top talent but somewhat toxic commodity, proving to be a much tougher sell to potential sponsors.
Their routes to new organizations varied greatly, but Wallace, Suarez and Larson are all in a similar position now. Each will feel the pressure to perform and justify what appears to be a step up in equipment and potential.
5. Pixelated speed
If there’s one thing the auto racing world got right when other sports couldn’t last year, it was adapting during the stay-at-home period of the pandemic. With the benefit of fairly realistic simulation software like iRacing and rFactor 2, racers around the world were able to compete, entertain fans and add some value for sponsors while most others were trapped with few options at home.
NASCAR was among the best of the racing tours to do so, launching the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series (eiPIS) for a seven-week virtual run through many of the tracks NASCAR had planned to visit in real life. Races were streamed by drivers on Twitch and broadcasted on FOX Sports, giving a sports-craving audience something resembling normalcy that they could look forward to each weekend.
Fans did their part to support the series, particularly in the early stages, allowing the venture to kick off with significant momentum. The 1,339,000 viewers of the second event at virtual Texas Motor Speedway made it the most-watched eSports broadcast ever, with a race that provided the feel-good moment of the series when Timmy Hill nudged William Byron out of the way and scored a win that would have surprised most people that had seen Hill compete for underfunded organizations in NASCAR’s real-life ranks.
There were many positives to the eiPIS, but that’s not to say it didn’t have drawbacks. The initial buzz of the virtual events faded with regularity. Crashes and actions weren’t always realistic – see Jeff Gordon hung up in the Talladega Superspeedway catchfence – and the unique differences in virtual racing threw many of the sport’s best drivers off their usual form.
There were controversies, too. Bubba Wallace trended for losing Blue Emu as a sponsor after quitting a race at Bristol Motor Speedway before his popularity later exploded as an advocate for the Black community. Kyle Larson’s racial slur wasn’t uttered on a NASCAR stream, but it showed the real PR risk involved in streaming with a live mic.
Over the course of the program a portion of the fanbase began to feel fatigued by the esports movement. By the time real racing returned in May, the eiPIS was due for a break to avoid burnout. The brief tour ended with a run at the virtual North Wilkesboro Speedway, a historic track that had just been added to the service, then went quiet as the stars of NASCAR roared back to life at Darlington Raceway.
But the series isn’t staying dormant. NASCAR announced in January that the virtual tour is returning for a 10-race run this year.
The races will be held during the midweek at primetime and be used to preview upcoming race weekends, with a few coming at tracks the sport won’t have visited until the ensuing Sunday. They’ll be separated by two or more weeks and air half under the FOX Sports banner and half for NBC Sports, just as the real-life Cup tour does.
There are understandable reasons behind relaunching the virtual series. It’s relatively cheap to produce, doesn’t require competitors to travel and can fill in some of the lost time with practices and qualifying removed from the bulk of the 2021 schedule. NASCAR can also use it to promote its legitimate sim racing series, the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series.
But part of what made the initial run successful was the lack of alternative, real-life racing options. It will be interesting to see if the relaunched effort can provide enough incentive for fans to tune in on midweek evenings when the real-life races are just days away.
