(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden

Main Takeaway

The Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum has been an entertaining, unique show for each of its two runnings at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A NASCAR equivalent to the first day of school. 

It’s made for a fun exhibition, and that’s all it should be. 

Without the need to worry about points, drivers were freed to take on the stadium bullring with reckless abandon. Those racing at any given moment traded bumps as raised tempers on-track, while the others laughed and watched on from the infield. 

There was potential fuel for feuds – AJ Allmendinger and Chase Briscoe collided in practice. Kyle Busch alluded to owing Joey Logano after the defending Cup champ spun him. Bubba Wallace was less than pleased with Austin Dillon after being spun out of contention for a win or podium in the closing laps. It’s easier to shrug off an exhibition, but drivers also never seem to forget when they’re wronged. 

The unique mid-race concert with Wiz Khalifa was a hit. Driver aggression made for an entertaining show – albeit one overcooked by race’s end. Race winner Martin Truex Jr. was clearly overjoyed to have brought home one of the bigger wins of his Cup career. 

Much went right for the year-opening show, just as it did in 2022. NASCAR could come back to LA for a third time in 2024 – NASCAR has an option for the final year of its three-year contract with the Coliseum — and returning seems like a smart move. 

It just needs to stay an exhibition. 

There were murmurs over the weekend that the Coliseum race could potentially be shifted to a points-paying event next year. Auto Club Speedway is going to be off the schedule as the facility is reconfigured to a short track, leaving the LA market without a nearby points race. 

The initial Clash in 2022 showed potential that it might not go too poorly as a points event, with a more traditional racing product. But Sunday’s race was clear proof that such a move could end in disaster. 

Don’t take my word for it. Let the inaugural race winner from last year spell it out to you, courtesy of NBC Sports’ Dustin Long. 

Fitting a full points field on the Coliseum track might not even be feasible for a full-length race. It it were to happen, the resulting event could easily devolve into a caution-filled slog that runs over the TV window and grinds momentum to a halt. 

The current Clash setup is fun. Unique. Not necessarily my favorite form of racing, but a special delight on the calendar nevertheless. It’s reinvigorated a stale event and made it into a highlight on the yearly schedule. 

It can stay on the schedule moving forward. Just don’t make it a points race. 

Good, Bad and Ugly

Good: MTJ Gets Back on Top

Martin Truex Jr.’s 2022 season was a complete victim of the modern NASCAR playoff format. He spent the weeks before the regular season finale battling inside of the top-five in points and could have left the Daytona finale second in the standings. But his No. 19 team failed to win, leaving the veteran on the outside looking in when the playoffs arrived due to a parity-filled season. 

That made the veteran an afterthought for the final 10 weeks of the year, which wasn’t entirely fair to his No. 19 team. The current points system is what it is. Everyone understands the necessity to win going into it. But it’s safe to assume Truex could have been a stronger title threat than many of the actual playoff contenders had he made it into the postseason field. 

The odds are strong that Truex will be a threat once again this year. By winning immediately, he and the No. 19 team made sure everyone is aware of it from the start.

 

Bad: Qualifier Commercials

Look, I try not to bag too much on the coverage of these races anymore. I can live with the overuse of tight shots — zoom the cameras out, please — constant sponsored camera angles and general overabundance of commercial breaks. 

But throwing a full-screen commercial break into the middle of a sub-15 minute Last Chance Qualifier? Without a caution or anything else to justify it? 

That felt greedy and unnecessary. 

 

Ugly: Overqualified and Under-raced

For most of the night, Sunday’s Clash brought the right mixture of aggression and action. There were cautions mixed in throughout the proceedings, but typically between them were enough green-flag laps to keep the event from stalling out. 

That all changed heading into the final 75 laps of the feature. After Wiz Khalifa’s halftime performance, the field began clanging into each other and causing cautions with such consistency that it slowed the average speed to 21.831 mph. 

No, seriously. That’s not a typo. The Cup Series field completed a race at a pace that would have gotten them honked at by trailing traffic on nearly any roadway in America. 

The cause for the slow pace was the constant influx of crashes in the final 75 laps. With the cars so close on pace, drivers had little choice but to use each other up and knock competitors out of the way to move forward. 

Aggression was the key ingredient of the night, but came in too strong a dose. There were 16 cautions in the feature, well over the four seen in 2022.  

That’s at least partially attributable to the new format this year, which welcomed five qualifiers from each heat instead of four. The additional quartet in the feature clogged up the track, adding traffic for the leaders and making the short circuit feel even more crowded and impossible to traverse. 

The last chance qualifier races also dragged on a bit too long, their 50 laps enough to remove some urgency and any doubt that those with top equipment would be able to overcome issues in the heats and march their way into the feature. 

The true showcase of an event’s prestige isn’t in who qualifies for the event. It’s in the group that fail to make the show. It should be an honor to qualify for a key event, not an embarrassment to miss it. 

If the Clash and the All-Star Race are meant to be unique showcases of the sport’s stars, then it’s time to embrace sending a few key names home early. 

Shorten the LCQs. Allow fewer cars in the feature. Position the smaller field to put on a show where every competitor seems important. There’s a good chance that the racing will improve and the feature will feel more special. 

 

Good: Strong Runs For New Organizations

There was a real chance in the final 50 laps that Ryan Preece was going to open up his tenure at Stewart-Haas Racing with a victory. 

Preece used his bullring prowess from years of Modified competition to march to the front in his first race with the No. 41 team. Had he not encountered fuel pump issues in the closing stages, there’s a good chance Preece would have won the race outright. 

That he ran so well was a serious statement of intent from the Connecticut native. But he wasn’t the only one to show out with a new team. 

Kyle Busch took no time to make an impact at Richard Childress Racing, overcoming getting spun in the feature to challenge for the win. Busch drove straight through the field and restarted outside of Truex with a chance to take the lead on the final run. 

He ultimately failed to get past his old teammate and settled for third. But Busch was in the conversation for a win in his first race for the No. 8 team. 

Tyler Reddick managed a top-10 in his first run for 23XI Racing. Preece held on to seventh despite his late trouble. Noah Gragson made the feature and finished a respectable 14th. Ty Gibbs overcame a Saturday fire that left him in the back of the field to make the feature, then passed multiple cars before crashes left him out in 26th. 

The Clash doesn’t ultimately mean much for the rest of the year. But it does provide a chance to get the season started off right. Preece, Busch and others took full advantage of that opportunity. 

 

Bad: Painful Bumps

 If you followed NASCAR at all in 2022, you know that one of the biggest storylines and concerns were the effects of rear impacts on drivers. 

Alex Bowman missed five playoff races with a concussion after backing into the outside wall at Texas Motor Speedway. Kurt Busch has yet to be cleared to compete after a summer qualifying crash at Pocono Raceway. 

NASCAR had made efforts to improve the safety of its machines heading into 2023. It was concerning, then, to hear Busch’s 23XI Racing teammate, Bubba Wallace, say that “rear bumper hits are still ——ing awful” at one point in Sunday’s race. 

For such concerns to be risen so quickly brings at least a small level of concern. This will be something to continue watching as the sport enters the second year of the Next Gen car. 

 

???: Podium Festivities

I can’t decide if this was good, bad or ugly. But watching a podium celebration at a NASCAR Cup Series event just felt different.

There’s potential for a podium to be spicy and fun, particularly if two of the top-three drivers have issues with each other during the race. But it feels strange in NASCAR. The series’ style is so all-or-nothing in regards to winning – just look at the championship format.

If nothing else, having a podium made the Clash feel unique. That isn’t a bad thing.

It does seem like they got the order of the podium backwards, though… Unless they were meant to face the other way.

 

Bad: Mixed Messaging

NASCAR as a sport has taken great strides in its effort to rebrand itself in recent years. Hosting the sort of stadium spectacle race like the Clash is a concrete example. 

But the moves being made and the way the series is being portrayed seem to differ in key moments. 

NASCAR is an entertainment product. The sport should be fun and provide light relief from the difficulties of everyday life. 

But the series shouldn’t be an outright comedy. That’s why it’s a shame to see a failure to create the proper atmosphere by some of the key elements of the sport’s presentation. 

Take the pre-race introductions, for example. Introducing drivers by team was a fun shift from the norm on Sunday, but the person giving the introductions – Joel McHale – peppered them with mispronunciations and jokes that often failed to hit home. 

As FOX Sports began to roll through its first race weekend of the seasons, it also became apparent that the network’s use of silly, cartoonish drawings of the sport’s drivers is continuing for another year. 

To say some of them aren’t accurate depictions of the people they’re portraying is putting it lightly. 

To his credit, lead broadcaster Mike Joy has obvious passion for motorsports and puts in the work to portray NASCAR in the right light. He comes into each week prepared and slides in subtle facts about drivers and their families that you might not even catch. 

Many of the commentators can also provide valuable insight. Tony Stewart did so well on Sunday. Kevin Harvick figures to be a great value-add when he comes to the booth in 2024. 

But sometimes the conversations around Joy devolve into off-topic, goofy ramblings that threaten to derail the broadcast. The moments aren’t always unwelcome, but mixed with some of the visual effects they sometimes combine to portray NASCAR in a light that undervalues the drama and competitive joy of the sport. 

A major issue in an exhibition race? Not entirely. It’s supposed to be fun. But it’ll be unfortunate if NASCAR’s biggest race, the Daytona 500, isn’t given the proper ambiance and gravity when it gets underway in two weeks. 

 

Good: Night Time is the Right Time

Look, I’ve been one of the biggest detractors of modern NASCAR race times out there. It partially comes from a selfish place — I essentially can’t cover races any more given how late they run and my need to get to a day job by 8 a.m. ET on Mondays. But it also seems unfair at times to those that attend races as fans, while leaving little wiggle room for contingencies at many tracks should rain fall. 

That said, the Clash made much more sense as a night race. 

Shifting to a later start time put the exhibition race under the lights in primetime on Sunday night. In this instance, the move added a big event feel and improved the overall vibe of the show. 

The halftime concert felt like a nighttime delight. Lighting the Coliseum’s peristyle felt more grandiose with the flame’s bright light shining through the darkness above the facility. Short track racing naturally lends itself well to nighttime. 

I can begrudgingly accept later start times at other races for strictly business reasons. Even if they’re inconvenient for me, they tend to yield higher ratings and provide more value to broadcasters. 

But in this case, it also seemed to add to the feel of the event itself. The Clash just felt right at night. 

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