Allmendinger in 1st Cup race since ’18
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – AJ Allmendinger is back, racing for wins this time, and eager to help young Kaulig Racing reach the big show.
Allmendinger will run his first Cup race since the 2018 season finale in Kaulig’s first Cup race not at a superspeedway. The team last week made its second Daytona 500 – a critical first step in trying to become a full-time Cup team – and now its dusted off ol’ ‘Dinger to take another shot Sunday on Daytona’s road course.
Allmendinger is a ringer with 15 appearances in the Rolex 24 sports car race in Daytona. Nearly everyone else? The bulk of the Cup field ran it for the very first time last August, when the pandemic pushed Daytona’s winding 14-turn, 3.61-mile circuit onto the calendar for the first time.
His familiarity with Daytona made Allmendinger the smart pick for Matt Kaulig to take another step forward. NASCAR added Sunday’s road course race to the schedule in December and Kaulig persuaded his “trophy hunter” Allmendinger to help pull the team to the top level.
“I am pumped to be racing in the Cup Series for Kaulig Racing,” Allmendinger said.
Allmendinger was weary of the grind when he lost his job at the end of 2018. He had no desire to drive for mediocre teams just to have a seat. He decided to move on with his life.
He planned to do television work and maybe moonlight for team owners he considers friends. Kaulig kept Allmendinger engaged in 2019 by giving him quality cars that could win in five Xfinity races. The program swelled to 11 races last season and the “Trophy Hunter” had three victories in 16 starts.
Allmendinger was helping Kaulig grow a program. The team started in 2016 and this season Allemendinger will run full time for the Xfinity championship as one of three Kaulig contenders. He’ll also drive select Cup races as part of Kaulig’s development.
Having a central role in Kaulig’s push to the top has made NASCAR enjoyable again for Allmendinger. He remembered last week when Kaz Grala made his first Daytona 500 start just how special the sport had once been to him.
“I was standing next to Kaz by the car during driver intros and I think veterans sometimes, we lose sight of how big the 500 is,” Allmendinger said. “When you are just standing there and you see somebody who has made his first 500, his eyes lit up – it made me feel good.”
Track change: NASCAR this week tweaked the backstretch chicane on the Daytona course after dirt and grass played a pivotal role in the Feb. 9 messy Busch Clash.
Drivers in that exhibition learned the hard way not to cut that chicane because in short-cutting some asphalt they were dragging debris all over the speedway. Martin Truex Jr. wrecked while leading when he drove through dirt; others complained about windshield visibility.
NASCAR, based on driver suggestions, added rumble strips to the backstretch chicane to prevent drivers from using the grass. The rumble strip to the driver’s right is about 36 feet long; the strip to the driver’s left is about 30 feet.
NASCAR champion Chase Elliott wasn’t convinced the strips were necessary.
“If there’s dirt on the track, don’t run through the dirt, that’s pretty simple,” Elliott said. “As long as there’s grass there, I’d say there’s going to be dirt underneath.”
Going for five: Elliott has won the last four points-paying Cup road races dating to 2019, a streak that includes NASCAR’s debut on Daytona’s course last August.
He fell short in the Clash after spinning good friend Ryan Blaney in the 13th of the 14 turns as the two raced for the victory. Kyle Busch cruised past Elliott and Blaney for the win. Blaney had words with his buddy as they stood alongside Blaney’s wrecked car.
Elliott was remorseful for ruining Blaney’s race, but the Cup champion said he probably wouldn’t change how he raced.
“If I’m not trying to win, then what am I doing? And I think that’s pretty cut and dry, right?” Elliott said.
Elliott is bound to be just as aggressive Sunday when Elliott looks for a fifth consecutive road course victory.
As the Arizona legislature deliberates on how much, if at all, to fund the arts this fiscal year, arts organizations have spent the past year trying to stay afloat.
“Our regular earned revenue is down 90%,” Kate Wells, CEO of the Children’s Museum of Phoenix, said.
Wells’ staff at the museum has also shrunk from 110 employees to 13 since shutting its doors in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The museum’s transformed its parking lot into an outdoor playground called Adventure Play in November, but that doesn’t make up the difference.
“We’re losing money being open but it’s so important for us to continue to serve our mission and families so desperately need us to. They need to get out of the house, get the kids out from in front of the computers, do hands-on activities and see other children,” Wells said.
Arts and culture organizations like the museum are serving the community with little help from the state, but there could be help on the way. A $5 million allocation under consideration in the state budget could be approved just in time.
Arts organizations can’t count on state funding
State funding through the Arizona Commission on the Arts, a state agency, is not guaranteed. It hasn’t been since 2012 when the line-item specifically for the arts was eliminated from the States general budget.
Since then, arts funding has to be requested by the commission every fiscal
year.
Last March, the Commission requested $2 million from the state’s $11.8 billion “skinny budget,” but the request was denied. Instead, months later the Commission was approved for $2 million in relief funding from the state’s Crisis Contingency and Safety Net Fund.
For 2021, the Commission is asking for a $5 million one-time appropriation to be used for grants to help the art industry reopen and recover from the impacts of the pandemic. The funds would come from the state’s $12.6 billion spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1.
The commission hasn’t received that much in state funding since FY2001.
Steve Wilcox, communications director at the Arizona Commission on the Arts said if the $5 million in funding is approved, it would help fill a gap that isn’t going to be filled otherwise.
“We’ve been in a very year to year kind of situation which of course makes it very difficult to plan,” Wilcox said.
“We usually don’t know until the budget is signed, which often happens quite late in the spring, what our budget is going to be starting July 1. With that uncertainty, it can be a real challenge to build on past success and provide consistent, effective support to the sector.”
What art organizations are experiencing
The Children’s Museum isn’t the only arts and culture organization struggling.
Arizona nonprofit Free Arts provides arts programs for abused and homeless children across the state and many of the programs it provides have been canceled. Raising funds through galas and events, a source of revenue in normal times, has also been at a standstill.
“It’s been rough. We’re probably down in revenue between 15% and 20%. Which is significant especially because we’re in a growth budget right now, we’ve been budgeting to use some of our reserves to help us grow and serve more children,” Alicia Sutton Campbell, executive director of Free Arts, said.
“We did end up continuing to use our own reserves and we made use of every program that came out.”
Campbell added that the federal funding from the Paycheck Protection Program helped keep staff employed. The nonprofit also created programming that could employ artists and provide virtual or socially distant art classes and theater shows.
“We focused on what the kids need which was to continue to feel connected and they needed to feel like they weren’t being abandoned and they needed to continue to be able to use art as a tool for expression especially during a scary time,” Sutton Campbell said.
Tempe based theater company Childsplay also made use of federal funding with a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to hire three artists. The artists recorded solo plays that the theater company provided to virtual classrooms.
“We’ve reached more than 800 classrooms with these plays, it’s been a great success for us,” Steve Martin, managing director, said.
Wells said the Children’s Museum did not receive extra COVID-19 relief
funding from the state, but did receive help from the city of Phoenix.
How $5 million could help
According to a report prepared annually by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Arizona is the only state in the country that did not include arts funding in its FY2021 state budget.
This does not account for Federal or private funding. The Arizona Commission on the Arts receives about $800,000 in federal funds from a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The commission must reapply every year for this grant to get it.
Wilcox says the commission does receive about $1 million through Corporation Commission filing fees from the state.
“It’s time to look at how can we carve out something from the budget through general appropriation each year so that the arts community can feel more secure that that’s going to be there and make some plans for how we’re going to be able to utilize those dollars to continue to provide the services that we do for the community,” Campbell said.
“We have to make sure in Arizona that we don’t lose our small to midsize organizations. That’s where growth and innovation are happening, that’s where we are serving underrepresented communities. These small to midsize organizations really depend on public funding in order to make sure that everyone in the state has access to arts and culture, we have to make sure that in Arizona that we don’t lose them.”