1. NASCAR probably just lost the wrong intermediate track
During many discussions about how to make NASCAR better, oversimplification is one of the biggest specters to continuously raise its head.
Case in point: The consensus opinion was that the sport had too many similar intermediate tracks, which made things dull. Short tracks, on the other hand, were much more popular, thanks to the one-two punch of excitement and nostalgia.
The solution seemed pretty straightforward. Just get rid of some intermediates and build more short tracks, right?
This past weekend suggests the answer is probably more nuanced. The racing at Auto Club Speedway, one of those maligned intermediate circuits, was truly compelling. Jeff Gluck’s poll backs up that sentiment, with more than 90% of the respondents saying the Pala Casino 400 was a good race at the time of this column.
Alas, as someone once said in a context that was not about racing, the die is cast. After some uncertainty about the future of the facility over the past year, it appears it’s full speed ahead for the two-mile track to be reborn as a half-mile short track by 2025.
There’s no guarantee the racing will be better, and considering how boring some of the 2022 short track races were with the Next Gen car, there’s a chance it could be much worse. It’s quite possible that getting rid of Fontana was a simple way to approach a dilemma that everyone agreed was an issue – but not the right way.
2. Kyle Busch is simply better than everyone else who’s been driving RCR’s cars
A trade involving two talented athletes that need a change of scenery is a thing that happens semi-regularly in stick and ball sports. Not so much in NASCAR, where there aren’t driver trades, per se.
Still, that’s pretty close to what happened this offseason when Kyle Busch went from Joe Gibbs Racing to Richard Childress Racing and Tyler Reddick going from RCR to JGR-allied Toyota team 23XI Racing. It even felt like a trade from another sport with a younger talent whose best seasons are potentially still ahead of him being swapped for a proven champion entering his post-prime years.
Except Busch has so far looked like he’s very much still as good as he’s ever been. Despite winning only one of his final 50+ NASCAR Cup Series starts with JGR, it took him just two races to find victory lane in his new ride.
Along with wondering if Rowdy just needed something to restoke his competitive…
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