October opened with 2021 scheduling news for America's two largest motorsports series and NASCAR had long been touting a shakeup with its 2021 calendar.
Next year will be different, though for everything that is different, the 2021 NASCAR calendar will have a familiar feel.
There will be three new tracks for the NASCAR Cup Series next year, with Road America getting its first Cup date in 65 years, Nashville Superspeedway getting its first Cup date and its first national NASCAR series race since 2011 and the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas will get its first ever NASCAR date.
Along with those three new locations, Darlington and Atlanta each get second races back. Prior to 2020, Darlington had not had multiple Cup races since 2004 and Atlanta has not hosted multiple Cup races since 2010.
To make room for these five dates, Dover hands one of its dates to Nashville, as Dover Motorsports, Inc. owns Nashville Superspeedway. Austin is leasing Texas Motor Speedway's spring date for the 2021 season. Road America is leasing a date from NASCAR, presumedly the Chicagoland race, which falls off the schedule after hosting a race since 2001. Kentucky loses its one Cup date so Atlanta can gain its second date. Michigan loses a race so Darlington can pick up its second date.
Buried under all the date shuffles and new tracks is the spring Bristol race becoming a dirt race and the Brickyard 400 will move from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval to the IMS road course.
While Texas loses a points-paying race, it will gain the All-Star Race, which will shift from the middle of May to the middle of June, specifically June 13.
The Daytona 500 remains the season opener on February 14 with Homestead shifting to the second date of the season. The Bristol dirt race will be March 28 with the new Darlington race on May 9, Austin on May 23, Nashville on June 20, Road America on July 4, Atlanta on July 11, Indianapolis on August 15 and Daytona concluding the regular season on August 28.
Other regular season races to note include the possible final race on the two-mile Fontana circuit on February 28. Dover's lone date is May 16. The Coca-Cola 600 from Charlotte remains on Memorial Day weekend, May 30. Sonoma is scheduled to return on June 6. The Pocono doubleheader remains for June 26-27. Watkins Glen will be on August 8, the first race back after NASCAR takes two weeks off for the Olympics. Michigan's lone date will be the penultimate regular season race on August 22.
All the playoff races remain the same as 2020 with the only change being Texas and Kansas switching dates. Texas will lead off the semifinal round ahead of Kansas and Martinsville. Phoenix remains the season finale for a second consecutive season.
NASCAR has shaken up its 2021 calendar with new dates, new racetracks and track configuration changes. However, it does feel a little too familiar, kept the money within the existing duopoly and distracts people from not getting what they wanted most.
None of the new tracks are really getting a slice of the pie. Nashville happened to have the right owners. Dover Motorsports, Inc. is spreading its crumbs around. NASCAR, which absorbed International Speedway Corporation last year, and Speedway Motorsports, Inc. are each giving Road America and Austin a nibble for one year through the leases. Each of those dates could go elsewhere in 2022.
NASCAR had been running multiple races at Darlington and Atlanta for decades. Those are not new events and neither track showed a rebound justifying the return of second races. No one was really vouching for either to gain races. It almost feels like NASCAR making a market correction for moves made over the previous 15 years.
Flying over the heads of many and going unnoticed is the 2021 schedule shuffle did not add any more short-track races, which the masses have been begging for. The number of intermediate oval races did decrease from ten to nine, but the number of short track races remains six, and one will be a dirt race in place of a Bristol race that was not a concern.
The wait for another short track race will have to wait until 2022, when Fontana is converted to a half-mile oval, despite NASCAR already owning Iowa. NASCAR thought its best plan for adding a short track race to the Cup schedule would be to spend tens of millions of dollars to completely renovate a two-mile track into a half-mile instead of going to a track that NASCAR already owns. That track was built within the last 15 years, was already deemed acceptable for NASCAR's other two national divisions, even the modified division was scheduled to visit Iowa in 2020 before the pandemic and has hosted IndyCar. NASCAR had a golden solution sitting right in front of its face that it could plug into the schedule with little effort and it tossed it away.
The dirt provides a distraction from that fact.
Losing a Bristol race for a dirt race is one step forward and two steps back. A dirt race could be the most-overrated idea in NASCAR history. It sounds nice, like playing basketball games on aircraft carriers, but we could find it was only a good idea on paper. These Cup cars are heavy and low on horsepower. They are not going to sling dirt like a sprint car or a dirt late model. As we have seen with seven Truck races at Eldora, the last five of which have averaged a speed between 41 and 46 MPH, a Bristol dirt race will be a slow affair with cars trudging around at 65 MPH when a typical Bristol race has an average speed over 20 MPH faster.
This is at most a vanity event at the behest of Fox. It could drum up some interest but ultimately fall on deaf ears. Something kooky, but receiving little attention outside the bubble NASCAR already lives in. It is scheduled for the final Sunday in March. If everything goes right, the NCAA tournament would have Elite Eight games that day drawing the attention of most American sports fans.
Even in adding a dirt race, NASCAR did not do it for the most possible good for the series. If adding a dirt race, no matter what, would give NASCAR a positive outcome of at least +2, adding a dirt race in place of a Bristol race is at most a +3. If this dirt race was in place of a Pocono race or a Las Vegas race or a Kansas race, it would be greater than a +3, it would likely be a +5 or +6. If it was for a Pocono race that would likely be the most possible good and be a +10!
We got changes, but these changes do not maximize what is the best possible schedule.
NASCAR had a recent history of schedule realignments to learn from with its 2021 decisions, and unfortunately, it appears to have repeated some of its worst offensives from the 1990s and 2000s.
I really hoped NASCAR would have learned to not entirely shutdown racetracks and abandon fanbases. That has not changed, as Chicagoland and Kentucky will be entirely gone from the NASCAR schedule, not just losing Cup dates but losing all national touring series races. It appears Iowa will also lose its Grand National Series races and Truck race and close entirely.
After watching North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, Nazareth, Pikes Peak, Memphis, the Milwaukee Mile and Indianapolis Raceway Park lose races and disappear from the scene, some closed forever, others hanging on with minor events, you would have thought NASCAR would have had a little more compassion for the million dollar palaces built and favored over the less-glitzy short tracks that were pilfered over the previous two decades. Chicagoland and Kentucky face the same fate of the previously trampled regional gems.
Nothing says growing motorsports and increasing outreach more than shutting tracks down. NASCAR might have had too many intermediate races and needed to drop two or three, but it should not have come at the expense of tracks that only had one race. At the very least, even if these tracks had to make way on the Cup schedule, they should have kept something, a Grand National and Truck race to keep the doors open and keep a NASCAR national series visiting the community. That will not happen and fans in Illinois and Kentucky will have to venture a little further if they hope to see NASCAR in person again, or they will have to settle for sitting in front of the television.
The schedules all mirror one another, and it is partly done to reduce costs for the television partners, but it also is meant to boost the existing tracks. The trend will continue of more triple-headers with all three national touring series together at one track and standalone events become even more endangered ahead of 2021. Iowa is gone. We might be lucky if we are left with Mid-Ohio in NASCAR's second division, and Gateway, Mosport and Eldora in the Truck series. With each calendar realignment, NASCAR's lower two divisions lose a little more of their identities.
This long-awaited 2021 schedule shakeup reset the clock for when people eventually get bored again and demand another shakeup. Maybe that is when Chicagoland and Kentucky return if they are not hidden under bushes and vines. Maybe that is when another short track or two are given races. Whatever occurs, we can be certain it will remain in the houses controlling NASCAR's interests. The dates will not move all that far or to unfamiliar areas. If a track wants to keep a date or gain another, it's best to build a casino somewhere on the property. In the 2020s, that is the best way to assure survival.
Until 2025 or 2029 or 2032 or whenever people are poking for change, some places get to breathe a sigh of relief it was not them on the chopping block this time around, but they should remain vigilant their demise is not sooner than they realize.
