Although NASCAR is leaving behind markets that were once appealing, such as Chicagoland and Kentucky, it is moving to some markets that may help expand its footprint with events at COTA in Austin, Texas, and Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.
“I think you see a really great balance of that with our schedule where we’re able to go to some iconic race tracks, certainly with Road America, COTA, the change at Indy, Nashville, two races at Darlington,” O’Donnell said. “Our whole industry loves Darlington. Atlanta, we used to have a championship in Atlanta. Now we are going back there twice.
“For us, it was a real balance of trying to kind of embrace the old and also look at some new things. A lot of change certainly, but we believe it’s a good balance for both.”
With Speedway Motorsports promoting the COTA race, it pulled a points race away from Texas Motor Speedway. NASCAR and SMI believed TMS would be a “natural fit” for the All-Star Race, so that contest moves to Texas Motor Speedway and concludes the FOX portion of the television schedule.
“To be able to go to COTA, we did not want it to come at the expense of Texas,” O’Donnell said. “The ability for us to bring the All-Star Race to Texas, and also have a race at COTA was a home run. When that idea was brought to us, we felt like this is the best of both worlds.
“The race fans in Texas and the fact Toyota just moved there, it’s a huge marketplace for us and our television partners,” O’Donnell continued. “To be able to come to the state three times was a big win for us. That’s why you see the enthusiasm, because it’s a marquee facility. It really matches now where it’s additive to our schedule versus when we looked at it before, we thought it might have been more of a challenge.”
NASCAR will not hold any scheduled midweek races this year, believing weekend dates are the best option for the television audience and spectators.
But the NASCAR Cup Series will race on dirt for the first time since 1970 when it competed at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds. Many fans wanted the series to visit Ohio’s Eldora Speedway or Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway, but instead officials decided to cover Bristol with dirt, something that was previously done for sprint car and late model races in 2000-’01.
“I’ve seen some commentary about Bristol, ‘Oh, my gosh, what are you doing?’” O’Donnell said. “I think those same people may have said that about the college football game where there were 110,000 people and it was an absolutely unbelievable event.
“If you look at where we’ve been from a capacity standpoint for that event, the track wanted to look at reinventing, what we could do for that weekend, keep some momentum going for the sport,” O’Donnell added. “When we talked to our television partners about that, the No. 1 thing we wanted to see was can we make that happen? We all got together, worked with the race teams and said, ‘Let’s give this a try.’”
Thanks to the event at Auto Club Speedway being moved to the Daytona road course because of COVID-19, the first three weeks of the season will see the Cup Series anchored at Daytona Int’l Speedway for the Busch Clash, Daytona 500 and an event on the road course. The series remains in Florida for a fourth straight week with the annual visit to Homestead-Miami Speedway.
NASCAR will continue to limit track time at many of its events this season, but eight races will have practice and time trials. Since the pandemic began, only the Coca-Cola 600 has had qualifying. At all other events, the first time the drivers were at speed on a given weekend was the first lap of the race.
NASCAR is reviewing the potential for more changes in 2022, believing it’s important to continue to evolve.