The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Change looming as season arrives
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The sky isn’t falling — or at least it doesn’t feel that way — as NASCAR heads into the first of two seasons full of change.
In the three months since Kyle Busch won his second championship, NASCAR took its awards ceremony to Nashville, Tenn., and was eagerly embraced. The Hall of Fame ceremony last month focused on Joe Gibbs and his elite organization, which won a record 19 of 36 races last season as Busch earned Joe Gibbs Racing its fifth Cup Series title.
Drivers will return to the track at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday and the season-opening Daytona 500 is Feb. 16.
“We’re coming off of a very good year, I felt like last year, where we’re really getting some momentum back,” NASCAR Chairman Jim France said. “It’s exciting now, going into this coming year.”
Since replacing his nephew as head of the family business in August 2018, France has been a steady guide for a series trying to stop a slide in every important metric. Attendance and television ratings may have finally bottomed out, but sponsorship dollars are as hard to find as ever and cost-cutting is a major priority across the entire industry.
So the last full season for seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson is also the last year for the current race car. The “Next Gen” car is on schedule to race in 2021, and the project is expected to trim millions from team budgets because its parts and pieces will require a smaller workforce.
Even before that, NASCAR for 2020 made long overdue tweaks to the schedule with a few seismic shifts: Phoenix will host the championship-deciding finale in November, Martinsville Speedway got both a night race and the penultimate playoff race, Daytona gave up its traditional July Fourth weekend to Indianapolis Motor Speedway (and will now host the final regular-season race) and Pocono Raceway is going to host two Cup Series races in one weekend.
NASCAR was able to make those changes despite five-year contracts that had given track owners stability. But fans have complained about the stale schedule and 2020 was NASCAR’s first chance to make even small changes.
Adapting to it all will be Johnson, who said this year will be his last as a full-time NASCAR driver. His 19th season will be his last attempt to win a record eighth Cup championship, but Johnson said he has shaken off the pressure of chasing Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt and plans to enjoy his time in the No. 48 Chevrolet.
“I’ve been able to have some clarity and to really understand it on a deeper level,“said Johnson, now 44. “One thing that I’ve come to grips with and I’m enjoying letting go of is: I feel like I’ve been a bit out of character and a bit focused on a number, a statistic — and I’ve never in my life been that way. I’ve never raced that way.”