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An event designed primarily to get NASCAR in front of a new audience is instead shutting that audience out for nearly 60 percent it.
The schedule for the Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was released on Tuesday and revealed a change to the format that included moving the heat races to the night before the main event on Sunday, February 4.
The point of contention is that there is no public access for the Saturday portion of the non-points exhibition. In other words, fans who purchased tickets for the Busch Clash will only be permitted into the Coliseum to see the Last Chance Race, a NASCAR Mexico race, a Machine Gun Kelly concert and the 150-lap main event.
A sport that was built on hospitality and activation beyond the actual on-track product is offering none of that for a third-year race that was moved from Daytona to the second largest market in the country in the pursuit of new fans.
The decision left a lot of fans mad but that sentiment was also shared by those who work in the industry as well.
Brett Griffin is most known to NASCAR fans as a veteran spotter and co-host of the widely popular Door, Bumper, Clear podcast but he is also a marketing and activation specialist with nearly three decades worth of creating at-track experiential events.
He says this is the continuation of a larger trend and he is right.
NASCAR was forced to consolidate race weekends in 2020 and 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic but chose to continue many of those practices once the sport fully reopened by the 2022 season.
Where Cup Series drivers would frequently be subject to appearances throughout an entire three-day weekend, from Friday to Saturday, modern schedules allow drivers to get to the track on late Saturday morning.
Many tracks do not even have any hospitality options available on Friday.
Practice sessions would typically begin on Friday and would allow fans a more affordable opportunity to see Cup Series cars on track, and perhaps catch a glimpse of a star driver, even if they couldn’t afford a Sunday ticket.
So, this conversation is more about the trend than specifically the Saturday track access, or lack thereof, for the Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Griffin’s co-host and fellow spotter, Freddie Kraft, echoed the sentiment from his veteran peer.
Veteran NASCAR writer Jeff Gluck compiled many of the most prevalent fan reactions to the development.
What especially makes the decision hard to grasp is that the heat races tend to provide the most action over the course of this event, based on the first two years they have run it.
Unlike points-paying NASCAR races, where every charter protected driver makes the field and will take the green flag, the Clash will only start 23 cars meaning that 13 will be eliminated based in part over what happens on Saturday.
Those four races have real consequences and drama.
The rebuttal to all of this is that the heats were scarcely attended, even when they were on Sunday the past two years, but it’s still a hard pill to swallow for a NASCAR fan living around Southern California when their home track has been dismantled over the winter and the only event in their region reduced the access by half.
That point articulated by a veteran crew hand, too.
When Ripper refers to Thermal, it’s a reference to the IndyCar Million Dollar Challenge, a made for TV event paid for by affluent members of the Thermal Club in Riverside County. Since it’s a private venue, fans are not permitted to attend unless they are one of the lucky few who won a chance to pay several grand to gain access.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.