NASCAR back at L.A. Coliseum for season kickoff
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% 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 southern California 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 half-mile track and could take as long as two years to complete. The Clash could fill the void.
But because the Coliseum track is so small that straightaways are basically eliminated, the average speed at last year’s Clash was just 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. “There’s no reason to hold anything back because even if you crash you aren’t losing anything.”
In last year’s race, 384 total passes for position were executed, the most memorable a breathtaking maneuver by Joey Logano to get around Kyle Busch for the lead and eventual victory.