Los Angeles Coliseum preparing for second Clash
LOS ANGELES — The USC students tailgated and partied. They burst into the Coliseum and watched the action from their section. They were blown away by the power, speed, aggression and competitiveness of the combatants.
Nary a football was in sight.
They were drawn a year ago to the initial Clash at the Coliseum, a NASCAR brainstorm that proved immensely popular. The football field somehow was transformed into a quarter-mile racetrack. Behind the wheels of revolutionary New Gen race cars making their debut, the nation’s best drivers put on a daylong spectacle of bumping, crashing and speeding through four qualifying races and the finale.
Excitement was palpable. The USC students had never seen anything like it.
“I’ve got friends that go to USC and they were texting me all day,” said Noah Gragson, a 22-year-old NASCAR wunderkind who won eight Xfinity Series races in 2022 and will begin his rookie year in the Cup Series on Sunday in the second Clash at the Coliseum.
“A bunch of them went to last year’s race, got super hammered and had a great time. They said it was as exciting if not better than the football games. It was cool hearing it from friends who know nothing about racing but got introduced in such a cool way.”
The students’ experience mirrored most of the crowd that exceeded 50,000. It was the first NASCAR race for more than 70 percent of attendees. Afterward, drivers high-fived NASCAR officials and pretty much everyone concluded the experiment was an unabashed success.
Now there is talk of the Clash becoming a points race instead of an exhibition in 2024. The only points race in SoCal in 2023 is the Pala Casino 400 at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana on Feb. 26. The two-mile oval is scheduled to undergo a reconstruction, however, that will reduce it to a halfmile track and could take as long as two years to complete. The Clash could fill the void.
Here are five things to know ahead of this weekend’s Clash at the Coliseum, beginning with ...
The Clash becoming a SoCal NASCAR staple
NASCAR currently holds 36 Cup Series points races that count toward the championship. The Pala Casino 400 (previously called the Auto Club 400) has long been one of them. But NASCAR is facing the prospect of having no SoCal points race in 2024 and perhaps 2025 while the track’s reconstruction takes place.
One potential solution prompting discussion among NASCAR officials is to turn the Clash at the Coliseum into a points race and move it to the end of February after the Daytona 500, which is traditionally the first points race of the year.
The plan makes sense financially for NASCAR and for SoCal fans who otherwise would be deprived of a race that counts. Drivers, however, are hesitant to endorse the plan because it would change their mindset. Crashing and not finishing the race would put them at the bottom of the standings.
“I think making it a points race would take aggressiveness out of it,” driver Erik Jones said. “I wouldn’t necessarily like to see that. As an exhibition it’s a good fit.”
Because the track is so small that straightaways are basically eliminated, the average speed at last year’s Clash was only 63 mph. Driver Ty Dillon said that in an exhibition on such a short track, the only risk is “tearing up your race car, damaging door panels, that sort of thing.”
Converting the race into a points event changes the calculus.
“Now, you just go for it,” Jones said.