And So NASCAR Begins Again

It’s the shortest three months of the year.

It’s also the longest three months of the year.

Whether the NASCAR offseason goes by too fast or too slow, it’s officially over as the engines roar to life at Daytona International Speedway for the sport’s most prestigious race, the season-opening Daytona 500

If the last race of the year is the most important, the first one is the biggest spectacle. It’s a race everyone wants to win and one that, these days, almost anyone can win. It’s not a race for the faint of heart; part of that spectacle is the multi-car crashes that bring your heart to your throat for a moment until the dust clears.

The offseason isn’t quite the long cold winter it once was. (OK, it still is when you live in New England, but stay with me, here.) Social media have made the sport a year-round one. It’s no longer a wistful wait for the media tour or the anticipation of the annual test session at Daytona where the roar of the engines didn’t serve only to knock the dust off for racers, but for fans as well.

These days, the media tour and Daytona testing are no more, but drivers and teams are ever-present on Twitter or Instagram. News happens on a rolling basis. Announcements happen almost more like a stream of consciousness than as scheduled events. Even the ones that are at a pre-ordained date and time lack, if nothing else, the element of surprise.

In any case, it’s now, as of the time of publishing, less than 48 hours from things getting real. Sure, we’ve already had the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum but that’s little more than an appetizer for the smorgasbord of racing that is Speedweeks, which is still called that despite now being about five days long.

But before the engines roar to life—don’t worry, they still roar, even at tracks where mufflers will likely be attached—the offseason wasn’t without plenty to chew on. And now, just days away from the Great American Race and the start of everything, it’s time to digest them.

We’ll start with the mufflers because they generated a lot of noise from fans. Ironic because they’re mufflers, but there we are. 

What they don’t do is ruin the experience. The Next Gen car is loud. If you didn’t attend a race at a track of a mile or less last year, you might not have heard it, but it was an ear-splitting, headache-inducing pitch that the Gen 6 didn’t display. 

What the devices actually do is make it more…