Racing’s return full of challenges
Ganassi’s Kenseth faces test at Darlington
When the NASCAR Cup Series restarts its engines Sunday at Darlington Raceway, teams and drivers with Pittsburgh-area ties will be stepping into a new world shaped by the coronavirus pandemic and the sport’s virtual response to it.
No fans will be in the stands at the South Carolina track. Traditional prerace ceremonies will be curtailed or eliminated entirely. Drivers won’t get any practice or qualifying laps. Team owners and crew members will follow strict social distancing measures on pit road.
That won’t be all that’s different, though. The race will also mark Matt Kenseth’s debut with Fox Chapel native Chip Ganassi’s eponymous team.
The former Cup series champion is filling the seat Kyle Larson vacated when he was fired as driver of Ganassi’s No. 42 Chevrolet for using a racial slur during one of the simulator races fans flocked to watch during the real-world hiatus.
To add to the intrigue, Kenseth will be going in completely cold. His first lap since late in the 2018 season will come under green at one of the trickiest track’s on the circuit.
Darlington is known as the “track too tough to tame” and “lady in black” because of incidents caused by its unique egg shape. Because its corners are different sizes, cars rarely handle well in both, leading some to tap the wall and earn what’s called a “Darlington stripe” on their vibrant paint jobs.
“The learning curve is going to be steep,” said Kenseth, who will be living out of a motorhome he almost sold after Joe Gibbs Racing let him go at the end of 2018. “I know that being out of the car so long and starting with a different team, and piling on top of that not having practice for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be challenging, but I’m really excited. I’ve got to admit I’m as excited as I’ve been to go racing in many, many years.”
Earlier in the week, Kenseth mused on Twitter that the situation is so different that he almost feels like a rookie again.
During the hiatus, life has changed quite a bit for Ligonier native Garrett Smithley too. Before it, he was mostly an unknown hoping to latch on in the Cup series with the underfunded Rick Ware
Racing operation.
Now, after several strong runs against top Cup competition in the iRacing Pro Invitational Series, he has a higher profile and added sponsorship as a result.
Still, he’s trying to keep his expectations in check, especially considering the compact schedule the Cup series is facing over the next couple of weeks. After Sunday, teams will race at Darlington again Wednesday, then return to North Carolina
to run the Coca-Cola 600 and another makeup race at Charlotte Motor Speedway May 24 and 27.
That’s a lot of potential wear and tear in a short period of time for a team that lacks the resources of a Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing. Smithley’s goals are rather modest compared to those he took into the simulator races.
“We really have to make sure to keep these cars clean,” he said. “We’re likely going to be running the same car, same engine. Everything. So we’ve got to be super careful because we have cars that are coming out of the shop. We need to make sure we have the inventory that we can continue to race.”
As for the race itself, it’s likely to offer the series exposure it’s never really had before, even at the apex of its popularity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. No other major sports entity is active in the U.S. right now, meaning NASCAR is really the only game in town for the time being.
That could bring some pressure to put on as dazzling a show as possible. Or fears about appearing exploitative with the nation still gripped by a public health crisis. Ganassi driver Kurt Busch is confident the sport can strike the right tone, as it did with the simulator races.
“We’re hopeful that this is a light at the end of the tunnel that people can see,” Busch said. “Or a shining beacon that’s out there going ‘This is a professional sport with competitors and millions of dollars of TV and teams and sponsorships that create a sense of balance’ of ‘Wow, if they can do it, we can do it.’ ”