Status Quo
Indianapolis 500: 12:45 p.m.
Coca-Cola 600: 6:30 p.m.
Proposal
Indianapolis 500: 12:30 p.m.
Coca-Cola 600: 6:45 p.m.
What Kyle Larson has tried to accomplish over the past two years should be universally celebrated and encouraged but instead has generated a great deal of grief. To be sure, some of that is caked into the results of the past two Memorial Day Weekend Double attempts.
But everyone from Mother Nature to the France family are seemingly out to make this harder than it should be. Larson signed a two-year contract with Arrow McLaren to compete in the Indianapolis 500 but he wasn’t immediately gung-ho to run it back after crashing out of both races on Sunday.
“The Double is just a tough undertaking,” Larson said. “I think the window of time is too tight. Even if I didn’t wreck (at Indianapolis), I don’t think I would have made it here in time and probably would have had to end that race short anyway.
“I just don’t really think it’s worth it, but I would love to run the Indy 500 again. Just doing the Double, I think, is just logistically too tough.”
NASCAR knee-jerked over the off-season with a rules change intended to prevent or punish a scenario like last year where Larson missed the start of the Coca-Cola 600 due to rain-delayed start in Indiana and then outright missed the 600 altogether when that same storm rain-shortened the race in North Carolina.
But there is also some work to be done from the offices at the 16th and Georgetown roundabout to do their part to continue receiving the widespread media attention they receive when a NASCAR driver crosses over.
And maybe, just maybe, the likes of Alex Palou or Josef Newgarden will want to go the other way too.
Justin Marks, Trackhouse Racing team owner, and general motorsports enthusiast wants to see work done to improve viability of the act too. Of course, some of this is self-serving too because Marks wants to field a car in both someday too.
And he hurts for his friend, saying that ‘my heart hurts for my friend, before asking NASCAR and IndyCar to have conversations about this topic.
“I’m a believer that I don’t think motorsports should be in competition with each other,” Marks said. “I don’t think the industry is big enough for us to be trying to make things difficult on each other. I think there’s strength in collaboration between the two.
“I think in the way the world is right now, live events, especially live sporting events, are becoming more and more powerful and valuable in an increasingly digital and detached world. I think we have an amazing product, and cars going around a racetrack at 200 miles an hour is an incredibly visceral, authentic, raw, amazing experience, and there’s power in that.
“I think certainly the tide that raises all ships is a real thing. If I was running everything, I would do everything in my power to make sure things like that double can happen because I think it’s an amazing opportunity for NASCAR fans that want to watch their favorite NASCAR driver maybe watch the Indy 500 for the first time, learn about IndyCar, learn new stories and all that and vice versa.”
Marks said he wasn’t sure if schedule changes were viable for either race but said again that ‘people need to be working in a direction to try to make it happen’ as opposed to not.
And he is right.
Using Larson as analogy, consider what he does for dirt racing, growing the stature of top-level 410 Sprint Car competition while delivering it to a mainstream audience. His star power, combined with the competition and business resume of brother-in-law Brad Sweet, led to the creation of a whole secondary national tour just because of that crossover potential.
Let’s build together, NASCAR and IndyCar.
Prime Presentation
Some of this is circumstantial to the race itself, but the Prime Sports presentation contributed a great deal on Sunday, but the Coca-Cola 600 felt like a big deal that mattered all night.
It was consequential.
Starting with the pre-race show, in front of a live crowd and complete with a countdown to green, fans were told repeatedly how much this race meant to the industry. Then came the post-race scenes, with Ross Chastain very clearly celebrating his biggest accomplishment to date.
Chastain, referring to the race by its old World 600 name, repeatedly spoke about how much reverence he had for this race as a kid and how much it meant to add his name to the Hall of Famers and legends that conquered it before him.
William Byron and Denny Hamlin were clearly gutted by their defeats.
Byron grew up in Downtown Charlotte and has attended this race more than any other and very visibly coveted adding it to his resume. TV did a tremendous job in showcasing the focus Hamlin had in pursuit of Byron earlier in these races.
They were portrayed as gladiators and not cartoon characters for the first time in four months.
The race itself felt very old-school, at least once you imagined the three stage cautions were just debris cautions but was throwback in terms of the comers and goers. It’s a shame that so many of the die-hardest fans (supposedly) rejected watching a race on Prime Video because the product and presentation represented so much of what they claim to love about NASCAR in the first place.
Adam Alexander, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Steve Letarte are very good together, but as suggested by Sports on Prime executive producer Alex Strand, the pre- and post-race shows is 100 percent where they forged their identity.
After the winner and losers showed how much the race meant to them, the panel reiterated the point.
FOX Sports revolutionized the NASCAR broadcast game but in time became a caricature of itself. They have taken steps to change their approach in recent years, with Kevin Harvick being a godsend to the booth, but those races still feel like the Cup Series is being presented as a lighthearted performance rather than a high-stake competition.
Give credit to NASCAR for that here, because these race broadcasts are theirs, just as it is on widely praised CW Xfinity Series broadcasts and what fans enjoy about the NBC Sports portion as well.
Sunday night was the kind of show, even without factoring in a really competitive and compelling race, that you take to non-fan friends in the hopes of selling them on jumping aboard the rest of the season.
Where we stand
Historically, the Coca-Cola 600 is the first check-in point of the regular season, a status check of sorts and it’s a familiar dynamic to those who have been watching the past three years.
The weekly dynamic of the NASCAR Cup Series runs through William Byron, Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell with the always opportunistic Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney lurking. The race was dominated by Byron and Hamlin. Larson was an early leader until he slapped the wall and damaged his rear suspension.
This division is very much a Hendrick, Gibbs and Penske dominated landscape with the ability for a team like Trackhouse to hit on a set-up even with a backup car and win the race.
But as Marks pointed out on Sunday night, this single source supplied car still provides opportunities down the grid.
“So you come to a year like this where, okay, a Wood Brothers win, Trackhouse wins,” Marks said. “Other than that, (Christopher) Bell (won) three in a row and Denny has two. How do we close the gap? I think this car represents an opportunity to do that. That’s why I’m here. I would not have started Trackhouse and raced in the Cup Series if they didn’t go to this race car because that provides an opportunity to close the gap.
“What have I learned along the way? This is a people game. I mean, I do really work hard on trying to get talented people motivated to do really good work. I feel like when I sit up here, I say a lot of clichés. It’s true. It’s really true.”
It’s really fascinating to watch the likes of Trackhouse and Legacy Motor Club make a go of it as purely independent Tier 1 teams with their respective manufacturers but without an alliance with Hendrick or Gibbs.
From a standings standpoint, there is the potential for more shake-ups.
There are road course races coming up in Mexico City and the Streets of Chicago, places where Trackhouse could win again with Shane Van Gisbergen or Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger. But, as Allmendinger pointed out on Sunday, everyone is good at turning right and left these days.
But the gap is tighter and the race to make the playoffs is really compelling right now.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (spotlighted earlier in the week) is 17 points to the good, just ahead of Ryan Preece. Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Michael McDowell and John Hunter Nemechek have raced their way into the playoff conversation this spring as well.
Carson Hocevar keeps showing that he is a threat to win on a variety of different race tracks.
So on one hand, the competitive landscape is familiar in terms of who the powerhouses are, but there is also tremendous parity in the middle of the pack right now in that there are really just two classes — the OEM flagships and the midpack.
There are only a handful of ‘backmarker’ cars in the traditional sense.
