PART 1: EVERYTHING BUT THE DRIVERS
In a welcome change of pace, Nascar isn’t introducing a bunch of changes all at once—instead its introducing them over a two year period! While 2021 will see the debut of a brand-new generation of car and a post-Brendan Gaughan world, here’s what changes you can expect to see in 2020:
THE NAME
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| The new logo |
The series is now officially known simply as the “Nascar Cup Series”, or NCS if you’re short on space. Instead of one single series sponsor, there’ll now be four of them: Busch Beer, Coca-Cola, Geico, and Xfinity, which each of them getting or continuing a major additional sponsorship aspect (Busch Pole Award, Coca-Cola Regular Season Champion, Xfinity Best Service Interruption, etc.). All four sponsors will be integrated heavily into broadcasts and online properties (READ: Four types of commercials you’ll be absolutely sick of by the All-Star Race).
THE CAR
The biggest difference from 2019 to 2020 in the cars themselves will be on short-tracks and road courses, where there’ll be a “low-downforce package” with a tiny spoiler. Leave it to Nascar to come up with a new rules package that will only affect less than a third of the schedule for one year before everything changes completely.
THE SCHEDULE
Plenty has changed with when Nascar will be going to its usual cadre of tracks—here’s a quick rundown of the biggest moves:
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| Click to enlarge--the 2020 "Schedule Matrix" Know who's racing where and when the whole season long! |
—Phoenix is now the final race weekend of the year for all three national touring series. In response to Nascar moving its “Championship Weekend” to a literal desert, Mother Nature is planning on swamping Arizona with a monsoon.
—Homestead’s races will instead be held in March, taking it out of competition with the 800lb. elephant known as Football and into competition with the 500lb. rhino known as March Madess.
—Daytona and Indianapolis are switching summer race weekends—the Brickyard 400 will now be held in the scorching heat of summer (remember, they don’t have lights there) on Fourth of July weekend, while the Firecracker 400 will instead serve as the new regular-season finale. Sure it seems dumb and unnecessary, but it DOES mean that we could see Quin Houff win his way into the Playoffs on the final weekend with a fluke win at Daytona.
—Oh, and Indianapolis’s Xfinity Series race will be held on the infield road course, which, as usual, is a fantastic idea and should be logistically possible…unless it rains.
—Martinsville’s spring race will be held Mother’s Day Weekend under the lights on Saturday Night. Because nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” like showing up for Sunday Brunch with mom sniffling and coughing from spending a night out in the 40 degree cold of the Virginia mountains.
—Dover’s fall race is now a mid-August race, allowing Delawarean race fans such as myself to experience sitting on a metal bleacher in searing heat. Expectations are for attendance to rival that of the infamous Dover IRL race no one went to. No, not that one, the other one.
—Darlington’s beloved “Throwback Weekend” will now also be the first race of the Playoffs. So instead of “The calm before the storm” we’ll have a denouement of 16 guys on edge to advance and 24 guys depressed they might lose their rides next year. Fun fun fun!
—Bristol’s night race moves into the Playoffs, giving an even bigger audience to wonder why broadcasters are going out of their way to avoid saying the title sponsor of the race.
—Of course arguably the biggest schedule change of them all will see Pocono host a “doubleheader” race weekend in late-June. Basically it will feature a 325-mile race on Saturday (with normal qualifying procedures) followed by a 350-mile race on Sunday (with the field set by inverting the lead lap finishing order). If someone manages to finesse the free-pass rule and wind up on the tail end of the lead lap on Saturday, Sunday could see the strangest pole sitter since the Loy Allen Jr. era.
—Finally, Nascar will take a two-week break in August to allow the NBC family of networks to air wall-to-wall Olympic coverage. Yeah it stinks to have no racing for more than a week, but its worth it to see a five-minute vignette of Dale Earnhardt Jr. trying sushi.