NASCAR taking pictures in experimentation, making a lot of them

You miss 100% of the pictures that you do not take.

It was Wayne Gretzky — aka the hockey man on the hood of Tyler Reddick‘s Toyota at Darlington Last Year — who made that quote well-known. And he would know. The Nice One took 5,088 pictures in his NHL profession, leading to a report 1,072 targets. We bear in mind so, so a lot of these instances he lit the lamp. We do not bear in mind the so, so many 4,016 pictures he missed.

That brings us to the NASCAR storage, a world the place recollections of swings and misses appear to linger longer than most, particularly on the subject of the hallowed floor that’s the Cup Sequence. You need to begin an hours-long impromptu remedy session? Simply convey up the early-to-mid-2000s, when NASCAR underwent extra simultaneous excessive makeovers than a Beverly Hill bridge membership. From the preliminary iteration of the Chase postseason format and transferring the Southern 500 off Labor Day weekend to abandoning Rockingham and the rollout of the winged shoebox-shaped machine that was the Automotive of Tomorrow, inventory automobile racing self-inflicted too many overhauls directly.

In its seek for youthful eyeballs and wallets, it turned one thing older eyes not acknowledged and noticed longtime followers put their wallets away. Again then, we collectively ripped NASCAR management for all of it, and we must always have.

Now, we must always applaud them. Or no less than admire them. As a result of, like Gretzky again within the day, NASCAR is taking a variety of pictures, however not like their predecessors 20 years in the past, now there seems to be extra thought behind the timing and influence of these pictures. What’s extra, in the event that they miss — and so they do miss — they do not maintain taking the identical shot time and again even whereas the remainder of us are screaming, “That is by no means going to work!” As a substitute, they take their lumps and transfer on to the following concept.

Sort of like constructing a brief Major League Baseball stadium within a racetrack to play one recreation, because the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds will do that weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway. Hardball purists can query the thought all they need. Or they’ll, heaven forbid, have enjoyable for a number of hours on a Saturday night. And if it is not enjoyable? Excellent news: There’s nothing that claims it needs to be achieved once more. However whether it is enjoyable, maybe they’re going to attempt it once more.

“The query is all the time, what’s your motivation? Why are you doing this? Do you may have a bigger imaginative and prescient or are you simply saying, ‘What the hell’ and throwing stuff in opposition to the wall?” reigning Cup champ Joey Logano defined earlier this summer time, within the midst of his seventeenth season within the collection. “I do not essentially agree with all of it, however I do agree with the willingness to attempt new issues, as lengthy we additionally persist with what made us who we’re.”

It is including highway and road races, of which there have been six this season versus so many many years of solely two. However it’s additionally returning to North Wilkesboro and The Rock, even whether it is initially the All-Star Race or a Vans/Xfinity doubleheader. It is rotating Championship Weekend in coming years to completely different racetracks, however kicking that off at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the seemingly excellent dwelling of the season finale for practically 20 years, however not since 2019. That transfer to Phoenix was achieved as a result of followers had been demanding extra quick monitor racing. When folks began asking, “Why did we go away Homestead?” it was moved again because the kickoff for the brand new finale mannequin.

One foot all the time stepping ahead, however with the opposite foot nonetheless planted previously. It is exhausting to try this and preserve one’s stability. So, cease worrying about falling down. Count on it. As a substitute of fearing a scraped knee or elbow, get again up and take a look at once more.

“I feel there’s a spirit that should exist behind resolution making, of breaking new floor but additionally have that floor really feel acquainted, if that is smart,” Ben Kennedy mentioned in a dialog with Marty & McGee earlier this 12 months. Kennedy, 33, is NASCAR EVP, chief venue & racing innovation officer, the great-grandson of NASCAR founder Invoice France, and himself a former racer in Vans and Xfinity. He’s additionally the nephew of the person whom most blame for these ripped-out roots of the 2000s, former NASCAR chairman Brian France. “Nobody needs to neglect the place we got here from. Particularly not me, as a result of that is the place I got here from.”

See: Shifting the Busch Conflict from Daytona, the place nobody had cared about it or attended it for years, to the LA Coliseum. That was very a lot the brainchild of Kennedy. When all of the juice had been squeezed from that occasion after three years, it was moved again dwelling to North Carolina and Winston-Salem’s Bowman Grey Stadium, the place there may be by no means a scarcity of juice, particularly the sort constructed from fermented corn. How deeply linked is Kennedy to NASCAR’s historical past? That is additionally the racetrack the place grandfather Invoice France Jr. and grandmother Betty Jane France met, when he was being skilled because the inheritor to the NASCAR throne and she or he was Miss Bowman Grey Stadium.

Nonetheless, in the future, the Conflict on the Madhouse will even run its course and the occasion will transfer to some other place, doubtless one other location with a historic inventory automobile backstory.

“That is the distinction, I feel, between now and never so way back,” says Chase Elliott, winner of this 12 months’s inaugural Bowman Grey Conflict. “Strive it, and if it does not work, high quality. Subsequent 12 months, do one thing else. It looks as if earlier than selections had been made earlier than, both they by no means decided in any respect, or in the event that they did, everybody acted like, ‘Nicely, we’re caught with this now without end.’ However you are not. Different sports activities attempt stuff and if it does not work, they transfer on. We do this now, too.”

When did that mentality change? Nicely, nobody is ever going to place the phrases “pandemic” and “optimistic” in the identical sentence, however in spring 2020, as NASCAR raced to grow to be the primary main sport to return to motion, the one path again to the monitor was to make use of a Mr. Unbelievable-like flexibility when it got here to scheduling. Again-to-back weekends and doubleheaders on the identical racetracks. Midweek evening races. Letting go of fixed fear about what a not-full grandstand would possibly seem like on tv and giving the viewers at dwelling the most effective present obtainable.

By 2021 and a considerably return to normalcy, NASCAR discovered itself free of previous habits. It additionally helped that old fashioned yearslong contracts with racetracks had expired and a brand new, shorter-term race date enterprise mannequin had grow to be the norm. Again within the day, the identical tracks had the identical two weekends for many years at a time, not as a result of anybody within the storage needed them, however as a result of the contracts demanded it. As these lapsed, so did the “Nicely, now we have to go there as a result of we all the time have” mentality.

As August arrives and the discharge of the 2026 Cup Sequence schedule grows nearer, we’re placing into the rearview mirror NASCAR’s summer time of experimentation. The remaining 14 Cup Sequence occasions are races we all know on racetracks we all know for probably the most half on weekends the place we count on them to be, however solely after this weekend’s second-ever Cup go to to the Iowa Speedway. It is the interval on the finish of a summer time sentence that has raced in Mexico Metropolis, swerved via the streets of Chicago, skilled a pair of still-new oval revivals in Nashville and Indianapolis, and in the midst of all of it introduced a 2026 Father’s Day street event that will be run at a San Diego Naval base.

Oh, and it spent a five-week chunk of that as a part of the In-Season Problem that almost all rolled their eyes at — Elliott did not even understand it existed till he was requested about it in a information convention — however ended up changing into a enjoyable social media-fueled showcase for wunderkind winner Ty Gibbs and oft-forgotten third-generation racer Ty Dillon.

What’s subsequent? Nobody is totally positive. And that is not scary. It is thrilling. So long as no matter new continues to be framed by the basic standbys. The Daytona 500 in February. The Southern 500 over Labor Day weekend. Martinsville Speedway as the autumn chill begins to roll via the Appalachian foothills.

The concepts that labored — transferring the Conflict, reviving North Wilkesboro, occasional road racing — will stick round. The concepts that appeared to work however curiously went away — midsummer midweek evening races and one dust race per 12 months — will hopefully return. The concepts that had been groundbreaking on the time — the Charlotte Roval — will hopefully obtain a revival via reimagining.

The entire above whereas an exploratory Playoff committee continues to debate a doable factors system reboot and the sanctioning physique overtly covets the addition of one other producer to affix Chevy, Ford and Toyota. It appears like lots as a result of it’s. Nevertheless, it’s not 2004 another time. It’s as a substitute a thought-out collection of concepts, leaning on classes discovered.

Photographs taken. Lots of pictures missed. But in addition, a variety of pictures made.