(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
For many the year 2020 is one we’d all like to collectively forget.
But in the NASCAR realm, it’s truly been a year to remember – and perhaps even celebrate.
There was a time when the biggest controversy most in this industry thought they’d see this season came in the Daytona 500. It was a hectic race weekend, attended by United States President Donald J. Trump and subsequently rained out to Sunday. The weekend ended on Monday with fear of tragedy after Ryan Newman’s crash, only to give way to hope and inspiration as he shockingly walked out of the local hospital just two days later.
At the time tours overseas were discussing a spreading new illness referred to as the coronavirus by most racing beat reporters, but it wasn’t on the radar of many people in the states. I personally saw the risk it could post as I wrote of series postponing dates overseas in The Morning Warmup newsletter, but it was hard to tell if it would ever have similar effects in this country that often feels impervious to such things.
As we all know now, it did. CDC records show 237,037 American deaths from COVID-19 to date at the time of writing, with nearly 10 million total cases. The emergence of the pandemic has turned the world on its collective head, leaving countries locked down and travel severely restricted all around the world. Tours like Formula 1 and MotoGP have had to drastically alter their schedules, while others like Formula E closed out the year at one or a handful of tracks to prevent travel altogether.
NASCAR was sidelined by the pandemic just before the Ides of March at Atlanta Motor Speedway, right as teams were returning from the West Coast Swing for the stretch run of the regular season. Organizations ready to grind through the typical NASCAR swing were instead asked not to leave their homes as shelter in place orders hit, with many racing jobs deemed non-essential under the stringent rules of the time.
The industry wasn’t alone. All told, the entire sporting world shut down, leaving networks like ESPN and FOX Sports to resort to old highlights and Zoom-based talk shows to fill time.
In most sporting circles the hiatus stretched well into the summer, but the show must go on in auto racing. NASCAR was competing the next weekend – virtually, at least – contesting the first of many rounds of the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series.
Utilizing the iRacing platform, NASCAR was one of many racing series that found a way to compete through the pandemic and provide some semblance of value to sponsors that direly needed it amid a brutal economic time for all involved. The stint was a success, setting records for esports viewership on traditional TV. But with more than 30 races to make up, getting back to real-life racing was key.
So as soon as it was feasibly possible, that’s what NASCAR did.
“We’re looking broadly about what our options are,” Phelps said at the time. “At this particular point we would like to finish the season at Phoenix and keep the (10-race) Playoff portion intact. With that said, it will require a lot of different opportunities for us to look at. We’re in the process of doing that.”
In mid-May, as other tours were barely beginning to talk about a return to action, the NASCAR Cup Series ran its first race back at Darlington Raceway. The race was held with a skeleton crew at the facility, zero track time outside of the race itself, no fans in attendance and even the TV commentators reporting from back in Charlotte, but the race somehow went off without a hitch.
And thus NASCAR began rolling through perhaps the most unusual stretch of its history. Races from the three national series could be found on nearly any day. Midweek events were necessary to make up lost events, as were one-day shows for each tour to avoid crossing over each other. Drivers and teams wore masks, social distanced when possible and conducted all media obligations over Zoom.
It wasn’t always pretty, but the format worked. NASCAR was slowly able to convince governors of both liberal and conservative states to allow it to come to town. A few races were shifted to new locations and dates, making way for surprises like a road course event at Daytona International Speedway and a Dover International Speedway doubleheader. Events were held with few fans or, often, none at all.
In order to ensure the survival of as many teams in the garage and partners to the series, NASCAR had to get races in. So it did – through bleak odds and various challenges.
There were dark moments. Jimmie Johnson narrowly missed out on the playoffs at least partially due to a COVID-19 diagnosis during what would have been his final planned start at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Mask wearing protocol wasn’t always executed perfectly and a few driver interactions both with each other and occasional smatterings of fans proved more dramatic than usual due to the imagery of drivers breaking social distancing during a pandemic. The series also came under fire for merely doing health checks instead of constant testing of teams, something that likely caused missed COVID-19 diagnoses if Formula 1’s protocol is any indication.
But there was also plenty of good to mix with the bad.
Given the open playground of pandemic scheduling, NASCAR tested a host of new ideas. The choose rule was a big hit. Moving the All-Star Race from Charlotte to Bristol set the precedent for another shift to Texas next year. Under glow on All-Star cars didn’t go over quite as well, but the shifting back of numbers on the machines may lead to new advertisement opportunities in the future. The esports venture may also signal future opportunities for the offseason or elsewhere.
NASCAR also made major strides in its push for social equality, taking a strong stance against racial injustice with the banning of the confederate flag at its events and participating in the You Can Play Pride Auction that supported members of all genders and sexual orientations.
By the time the regular season drew to a close, the new-look NASCAR was back on track for its regularly-planned Cup schedule. The playoffs rolled through with relative normalcy – a nice reprieve from the year that preceded it.
In the end the sport was rewarded for its efforts with a dramatic close to the year that saw nine-time winner Kevin Harvick shockingly eliminated in the Round of 8 and rising Hendrick Motorsports star Chase Elliott break through with back-to-back clutch victories to claim his first Cup Series title. It marked the first title win for a Most Popular Driver winner since his father, Bill Elliott, won the 1988 championship in what was then the Winston Cup Series.
As the younger Elliott rolled through a burnout on the front stretch of Phoenix Raceway, retiring seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson drove up in his No. 48 Chevrolet to give the Georgian a high five.
It was a symbolic moment – a true passing of the torch from the past Hendrick Motorsports star to the current one.
The moment also marked a fitting end to an exhausting 2020 season. A year that proved chaotic, unprecedented and brutally difficult ended with a bright young star at the forefront and positive signs for the future.
“(On Sunday), when we crown a champion in our Cup Series, we will have run all our races,” Phelps said beforehand in a state of the sport address. “We did it through ways that, frankly, probably we didn’t think we could do, right?
“A bunch of midweek races. Three doubleheaders. No practice and qualifying. Things that were kind of significant in bedrock that we do, right? You come to the racetrack, you’re here for three days, you practice, you qualify, you’re on your way, right?
“For us to be the first sport back without fans initially on May 17th in Darlington, to the first sport back with fans, I think it’s an extraordinary achievement.”
Getting through the rest of the season from that point is the greatest accomplishment in Phelps’ short tenure as NASCAR president.
Given what was at stake, it may also prove to be the biggest accomplishment in the sport’s lengthy history.
