After spending NASCAR’s 75th anniversary season with our eyeballs firmly focused on the rearview mirror, we have chosen to spend these final days leading into the sport’s 76th year gazing not decades into the past, but rather glancing over the last 12 months.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the 2023 stock car calendar kicked off with an exhibition race from Hollywood, because during this same time when moviemakers have become so obsessed with the idea of crisscrossing multiverse timelines, NASCAR spent an entire season doing the same. A celebration of the sport’s past punctuated by what felt like a definitive changing of the starting grid guard. New venues mixed in with racetracks awakened after we had long ago left them for dead.
In the end, what earned the distinctions as the best or worst of this DeLorean time machine of a year? Grab a leather helmet, a hover board and read ahead as we present our 2023 NASCAR Year in Review.
Race of the Year: Kansas Spring Race
I can already hear the complaints from people wanting a sexier selection. But what else could you possibly want than a record number of lead changes for a 400 mile intermediate event (37), a seemingly endless series of fantastic restarts, an overtime finish and somewhat controversial battle between two future Hall of Famers in Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson, all finished off with chef’s kiss pit road throw down between Ross Chastain and Noah Gragson? To quote the great NASCAR philosopher Maximus, “Are you not entertained?”
Here’s what happened on pit road between @NoahGragson and @RossChastain. pic.twitter.com/MMcOLASlgq
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 7, 2023
Honorable Mention: Chicago Street Course, which rallied for a great show after a rainfall worthy of another Noah. Not Gragson, the one with the ark.
Event of the Year: All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway
The race itself wasn’t great, thank the super old asphalt and super butt-whipping doled out by Larson. However, in my nearly three decades of covering auto racing, I’ve never been to an event where everyone was in such a phenomenal mood. I will never forget being on the hospitality building rooftop overlooking Turn 4…
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