Jordan, Pitbull teams signal a welcome new era in racing
NASCAR feels different as it returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway this weekend for the main-race Dixie Vodka 400 on Sunday after Saturday’s undercard Xfinity Series race.
It still feels different for the wrong reasons as the ongoing COVID-19 threat entering its second year continues to limit crowds and drivers’ time at the track.
It feels different in good ways now, too, though.
There is a newness at play, a fresh breeze. This is not your grandfather or even your father’s NASCAR with its redneck roots harking to its birth in the segregated late 1940s.
The sport’s recent disassociation with the Confederate flag stands towering at the forefront. So does white drivers uniting to make that antiracism video last summer as the streets filled with protest.
We see a sport once stuck for so long in Deep South mores going national, attracting millennial eyes, entering the 21st Century.
“NASCAR is trending up,” as Homestead track president Al Garcia.
Because of the ongoing COVID-19 threat Homestead is being allowed only 18 percent of its capacity this weekend, or up to 10,000 race
fans.
But that’s progress. When Homestead hosted its previous NASCAR race last June it became the first major American league sport to allow any fans back at all, and it was 1,000 invited guests encompassing local military and first-responders.
Homestead hosted NASCAR’s November championship weekend, its final, crowning race, for 18 consecutive years from 2002-19 before the prestigious finale was switched to Phoenix. It was a major loss for South Florida, but Garcia finds a positive in what he hopes will be a permanent new calendar niche in late February.
“Barring having the championship I think this is the perfect time for us,” he told the Miami Herald this week. “We’re not competing with the Miami Hurricanes or Dol
phins. And NASCAR awareness is at ts height coming off the heels of the [season opening] Daytona 500.”
NASCAR awareness is buoyed by more than that. Look around at who’s getting on board.
Basketball icon Michael Jordan joined top driver Denny Hamlin to form 23X1 Racing earlier this month, and chose Bubba Wallace as their driver. That’s Jordan, among the biggest names in American sports history, aligning with the sport’s only current Black driver, the man whose raised voice led to the Confederate flag ban.
This month Wallace became the first Black driver to lead a lap in the Daytone 500. His watershed first victory is a story waiting to happen, and Jordan (expected to attend Sunday’s race) is behind it all now.
“He’s just a big fan,” said Hamlin of Jordan. “Now he’s embedded in it very heavily.”
Miami rapper Pitbull,
Mr. 305, Mr. Worldwide, has lent his international fame to the Trackhouse Racing team as a new part owner. In their car is Mexican Daniel Suarez, the first Latino driver to compete in a full season.
“We’re going to show the world NASCAR is not only a sport but it’s a culture,” said Pitbull. “This is a revolution.”
What for decades was a good ol’ boys club of white men is beginning to see small signs of diversity,
the fruit of the sport’s Drive For Diversity initiative that helps encourage and develop Black, Hispanic and women drivers.
New Orleans Saints star running back Alvin Kamara is on board now, too. The Confederate flag ban and Wallace’s activism last summer caught his eye. He attended his first race last June at Homestead. He has become an evangelist for the sport within the NFL.
“This is not the sport that someone who looks like me would be into. I’m being realistic,” Kamara said. “But I feel like I’m part of it now.”
Young drivers are noticing.
“Its unreal,” said young second-year driver Cole Custer. “To see new people getting in is exciting. The more we can be inclusive, the better.”
The fresh breeze sweeping across NASCAR also includes a more varied schedule with the addition of new venues, new markets. It includes an eSports version.
Heck, in 2021, Roush Fenway Racing has become the first team to be certified carbon neutral. What!? NASCAR going green? Something is going on here.
The newness extends to the drivers themselves. A new wave is happening.
Old stars recently have retired: Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Danica Patrick, Jimmie Johnson,
Tony Stewart.
Plenty of popular, familiar-name veterans remain, such as Hamlin
(who won at Homestead last June), Joey Logano, the Busch brothers, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman and Martin Truex Jr.
But into the mix arrives a new wave, led by Chase Elliott, stepping up to challenge to be The Next Big Thing. He won five races last season and was second at Homestead. He won the NASCAR Cup season championship, at age 24, to end the year.
This year, two first-time winners have won the season’s first two races in Michael McDowell at the Daytona 500 and Christopher Bell at the Daytona Road Course. That hasn’t happened in NASCAR since 1960.
Might another first-time winner arise at Homestead on Sunday? Might it even be Bubba Wallace?
NASCAR finds itself full of possibilities these days, a good place to be.
In the best era of girls’ basketball at Plantation American Heritage, Tatyana Wyche has been one of the constants. The star post player has been a part of three state championship teams and now she’ll have a chance to win a fourth Saturday, so it means something when she heaps praise upon her team.
After a 66-29 rout of Clearwater in the Class 5A semifinals Thursday in Lakeland, she didn’t shy away from a bold proclamation.
“So far,” the senior said, “this is the best team.”
It’s easy to see why. Wyche and twin sister Taliyah Wyche — both of whom have signed national letters of intent with the Florida Gators — give American Heritage (24-2) one of the best post tandems in the entire country. Guard Daniella Aronsky is once again a steadying presence and willing facilitator and two other newcomers in the backcourt — juniors Sydney Shaw and Joey Delancy, both of whom already have Division I scholarship offers — give the Patriots five players averaging at least 10 points per game.
With five of the best players in all of South Florida, American Heritage is the No. 14 team in the nation, according to MaxPreps, and one win away from a rare four-peat. The Patriots will return to the RP Funding Center on Saturday to face Melbourne Palm Bay in the 5A championship.
“As you can see, we’re playing, we’re passing, we’re penetrating, we’re inside, we’re outside,” coach Greg Farias said. “That’s what I like about this team. It’s well-rounded.”
American Heritage’s semifinal tilt was never in doubt.
The Patriots jumped out to a
7-0 lead, shut out the Tornadoes
(24-5) for the first 4:05 and held Clearwater to just four points in the first quarter. American Heritage led 14-4 at the end of the first and its lead ballooned to 37-12 at halftime.
The Tornadoes shot just 4 of 11 from the field in the first half — 36.4 percent — and committed 16 turnovers while the Patriots built an insurmountable lead with suffocating defense.
“It just gives us total speed of all five,” Farias said. “In the last previous years, we really just had the twins — they’re athletic, they can move back and forth — but this year the five have come together at the right time.”
On offense, the new balance was just as evident. With Clearwater focused on the Wyches, Shaw exploded for 16 points in the first half and led all scorers with 20, while Delancy chipped in 10 points and five assists.
While Taliyah Wyche battled foul trouble and finished with only four points, Tatyana
Wyche still finished with 14
points and a team-high four rebounds.
“We have much more talent,” she said. “Last year, we always had hustle, but now we have hustle, talent, IQ. We have everything we need.”
With one more win, the Patriots can become only the 19th team to win four state titles and move into a tie for the third longest championship streak in Florida High School Athletic Association history.
For the Wyches and Aronsky, it would cap already historic legacies at American Heritage — even if they aren’t necessarily the stars in the title game.
“In your legacy when you’re done, they’re not going to look back 10, 20 years and see how much you scored,” Farias said. “They’re going to know that you were the four-time state champion at American Heritage.”