Busch Light Clash racetrack-
Busch Light Clash racetrack-
This weekend begins a new era in competition for NASCAR’s Cup Series, which embarks on the use of its seventh generation NextGen cars at a venue where it’s never raced before: the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. While the Coliseum has hosted a variety of two-wheeled and four-wheeled events on dirt, using the famous Peristyle for launches, NASCAR and the venue’s management have built an asphalt quarter-mile track inside the football field for the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum.
It might be the first time NASCAR’s Cup Series raced at the Coliseum – and the first time the Clash has been held anywhere other than Daytona International Speedway since it began in 1979 – but there’s been racing both inside and out of the track since the early 1900s. The Mickey Thompson stadium races here were a big draw; seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson drove Mickey Thompson Stadium Trucks here in the early 1990s. A meeting at the 1993 race brought the Southern California native to NASCAR – the rest is history!
Of course, stock cars on a quarter-mile track isn’t unusual; events on a circuit of that size are contested on a weekly basis. But this is the first time the top stars of stock car racing will work on a track of this size and, just looking at the empty Coliseum and seeing the three lanes set up by NASCAR, this should be quite the fight between NASCAR’s stars. It’s also important to take into account the fact that next week is the start of Speed Weeks at Daytona International Speedway, making logistics for the teams an issue, especially if they have to repair brand new race cars before the largest and most important event of the 2022 season, the Daytona 500.
Most teams have brought a single car and many of the drivers have wide experience on short tracks. Ross Chastain, driving a Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing, spent Friday morning on a different endeavor: working with the…
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