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| The LA Coliseum will host NASCAR's season opening exhibition race in February (Fox News) |
"Are you not entertained?!"
These immortal words were shouted to spectators at the Roman Coliseum by Russell Crowe's character Maximus in the 2000 film Gladiator. No doubt the NASCAR sanctioning body will be thinking this same after announcing that the Cup Series is scheduled to open their 2022 season in an exhibition race on a quarter-mile short track built inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, in an event dubbed the Clash at the Coliseum.
NASCAR fans have been pleading for more short track races to be added to a schedule that includes more than its fair share of "cookie cutter" mile-and-a-half race tracks. This season saw the addition of some of the country's preeminent road courses (Circuit of the Americas, Road America, and the infield courses at Daytona and Indianapolis), but the only real shakeup on the short track side of things was coating Bristol Motor Speedway in a few layers of dirt for the first Cup Series race on such a surface in half a century.
Now, in one of the biggest schedule changes in recent memory, the Cup Series will see the traditional season-opening Clash moved from Daytona to the legendary LA Coliseum. The invitation-only, non-points event will be held on a temporary, quarter-mile asphalt track built inside the stadium. The current home of the USC Trojans football team, and the venue for such landmark sporting events as Super Bowl I and the 1959 World Series, the Coliseum can seat a capacity crowd of 77,500 fans.
While this may seem like a first-of-its-kind event, NASCAR has run inside stadiums before, including regional events at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. and a Cup race at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1956.
“Los Angeles is synonymous with major sports and entertainment events, so we seized an innovative opportunity to showcase NASCAR at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum,” said Ben Kennedy, NASCAR senior vice president of strategy and innovation. “We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to take center stage in this market as we get our 2022 season underway.”
Tickets for the Clash at the Coliseum will go on sale tomorrow at $65 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under.
A race that began as an exhibition event for the previous year's pole award winners, the Clash has been held the week prior to the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway since 1979. However, the last few years, the event was beginning to get a bit stale among fans. The field had also been expanded to include the previous year's playoff contenders and previous Daytona 500 pole winners. This past year, the event was moved to the infield road course at Daytona, and the last lap beating and banging between Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott that let Kyle Busch slip past for the win seemed to cure many of those ills.
But, addressing the fan base's request for more short track racing, while also racing in one of the largest sports markets in the country, will no doubt be a positive for the sport. FS1's NASCAR RaceHub took to the track, in iRacing simulators of course, with Jamie McMurray, Clint Bowyer, and Tyler Reddick to help give fans a small taste of what they can expect to see this February:
"This is gonna be somethin' you DO NOT wanna miss."@ClintBowyer, @TylerReddick and @jamiemcmurray take a few @iRacing laps around the LA Coliseum during NASCAR Race Hub. pic.twitter.com/4vzzcRgrEu
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) September 14, 2021
