Second Edition Of Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum Different But Still Good

Day of the 2023 Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum pre-activity track walk shot of the GEICO RESTART ZONE towards the iconic peristyle end of the Los Angeles Coliseum. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2023)

Second Edition Of Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum Different But Still Good

Almost nothing can ever match up to a first time experience of anything. A meaningful kiss, a campout in nature of a city kid, friendship with someone completely different than yourself, the achievement of a long and cherished goal that was months or even years in the study and making. 

The repeat in the "One Of" NASCAR race on a purpose built temporary Quarter-Mile oval race track came kind of close but was very different.

The 2023 edition and second running of the Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum had all of the elements in perfect order. During ground breaking ceremony held in December 2022, many of the crew that were there for the first build were happy to be putting the track back in again. 

The track build in preparation for the ground breaking ceremony at the nearly 100 year old LA Coliseum. The two rows of interlocking concrete edging balusters are already in place as the layered conversion of the base field takes place. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2022)

When asked if there were any significant changes to the build, the answer was that the process and materials were exactly the same, even down to the special composite aggregate (piled center/left in above image) used for the base under the asphalt which was stored off-site over this last full year after deconstruction, but refinements to the timing and procedures will result in cost and time savings in the second time around build. Live and learn.

Ground breaking ceremony featured (L to R) star California driver Kyle Larson, pilot of the No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, Jeremy Casperson, Director, Civil Engineering, NASCAR Design and Development, Matt Humphrey, Director, Track Communications, NASCAR, Kevin Daly, Assistant GM, LA Memorial Coliseum, and Patrick Rogers, NASCAR VP of Marketing Services. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2022)

Where the changes to the event from 2022 were most noticeable came to timing, competition, and surrounding entertainment. The overall focus in the purpose of this event seemed to drift off kilter over the experience achieved last year where an attendance of around 60,000 people filled the stands and an estimated 70% had never attended a NASCAR race event before (seems pretty easy in Los Angeles).

Roughly, about 3 weeks before the second running of the Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum, musical rap performer, Pittsburg's Wiz Khalifa was announced as the primary headline artist to perform at the mid-race break of the 150 Lap main event.

Over four and a half weeks earlier, it was announced that Los Angeles area (South Gate) rap group Cypress Hill whom were most famous in the early 1990s winning the 1992 Top Rap Song Of The Year Grammy for their breakout hit "The Phuncky Feel One" from their self-titled first album, would perform before the race got started.

Cypress Hill festooned percussionist sets up Eric "Bobo" Correa's kit just a couple of hours before the South Gate rap group were to take the stage and the Coliseum. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2023)

In 2022, the lead-in act Pitbull was announced in early December (as was the support act Cypress Hill for 2023), and in turn Ice Cube, the race break act, was announced also about 3 weeks from the race. Given just how much Ice Cube was identified with being a Los Angeles (Straight Outta' Compton) legend, his addition as the Race-Break entertainment boosted attendance.

 

Turn It Up As The Generation 7 Platforms Roll-In

The time of the competition was moved to start later so that the main event 150 Laps would be run under the lights of the stadium. What this brought about was a greater sense of mystery and it allowed impressive accompanying light show displays during the Wiz Khalifa Race Break show as well as end of race fireworks - again impressive as it was shot off around the glow from the Olympic Flame torch that was also lit during the Race Break ceremony.

Downtown Los Angeles at night might have had some folks give second thought about attending an event in the Coliseum. Football crowds are somewhat connected and mob-like whereas a group of folks who may be first-timers to a NASCAR event headlined with entertainment based in a hard scrabble street culture as Wiz Khalifa solo (non-duo) efforts extoll.

EXAMPLE LYRICS:

Black And Yellow 

Uh, black stripe, yellow paint

Them niggas scared of it, but them hoes ain't

Soon as I hit the club, look at them hoes' face

Hit the pedal once, make the floor shake

Suede inside, my engine roarin'

It’s the big boy, you know what I paid for it

And I got the pedal to the metal

Got you niggas checking game, I’m ballin' out on every level

Hear them haters talk, but there’s nothin' you can tell 'em

Just made a million, got another million on my schedule

No love for 'em, nigga breaking hearts

No keys, push to start

[ht: Genius Lyrics]

Last year the Super Bowl was held just West of the LA Coliseum at SoFi Stadium. This year, next week's Super Bowl will be held in Phoenix. The halftime act for the 2023 Super Bowl is Rihanna. Too bad Rihanna wasn't enticed to preview a portion of her show during halftime of the second edition of the Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum. A recommended choice for such a showcase would have to be - original Rihanna Video link - "Shut Up and Drive" (featured on the soundtrack of the 2012 Disney film Wreck-It Ralph, playing over the scene in which Ralph teaches Vanellope von Schweetz to drive in the arcade game Sugar Rush).

The race for the second time around was another experience altogether. In 2022, the venue was completely new as was the NextGen (7th generation formula) racing stockcar. Given the tight track and a new platform, the drivers were not keen to take big chances. In the 150 lap race, there were 5 Caution periods. The action began to feel predictable. Joey Logano held off hard-charging pole winner Kyle Busch to triumph in Sunday’s Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. Logano got the lead on Lap 116, moments before Kyle Larson retaliated against Justin Haley for earlier contact that was not of Haley’s doing. Larson steered toward the bottom of the track, knocking Haley’s Chevrolet into the concrete Jersey barrier on the front stretch.

Michael McDowell (spins prior to Turn 3) — Finished 24th: “I don’t know how many laps under caution we ran, but obviously just a calculation running the LCQ and a heat race. We just didn’t anticipate running over 100 laps of caution, so that was unfortunate. It was a battle out there for sure. I feel good about how we were able to start near the back and drive up into the top 12, top 13 twice, so our car was good. It’s just a good weekend. We’ve got a lot of new guys, so it was good to get up to speed and figure each other out.” Image Credit: Ralph Garcia (2023)

This second bite at the Los Angeles Avocado (as opposed to Apple), drivers knew just how tough the NextGen platform could be, since it was tested throughout the 36 race 2022 season, and the phrase "if it ain't rubbin', it ain't racin'" came to full effect. 

The race time went much longer than most in attendance expected largely on the turn of 16 Caution periods with the majority coming during the second 75 Laps to finish the race. It was as if there was an understanding the the first 75 Laps we will push and shove, but the hammer drops when the end of the race is in all of our sights. 

Confetti flies in the air as Martin Truex Jr. won NASCAR's exhibition Clash on Sunday night. Truex’s win in the exhibition race comes after he was winless in 2022 for the first time since 2014. Truex had won 29 races from 2015-2021 but had just four top fives and 15 top 10s as he missed the playoffs for the first time since that 2014 season. Image Credit: Black Kat Sports (2023)

Post Race Driver Remarks >>> 

In honor of the celebration of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum being constructed 100 years ago, it was decided to award the podium finishers of the 2nd edition of Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum with Olympic style medals - Martin Truex 1st/Gold, Austin Dillon 2nd/Silver, and Kyle Busch 3rd/Bronze. Jostens produced these exquisite medals, along with the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum Trophy that was presented to the winner of the non-points paying exhibition. Each custom-crafted keepsake features the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum logo beautifully embossed on one side. The other side features the Coliseum’s centennial mark and the NASCAR 75th Anniversary logo. Image Credit: Ralph Garcia (2023)

Fox earned a 2.01 rating and 3.647 million viewers for Sunday night’s Clash at the Coliseum. The ratings were down about 15% from last year, but second most watched sports program - the NFL Pro Bowl was most watched for the weekend.

Despite the smaller audience, the race still delivered NASCAR’s largest viewing audience since the Coca-Cola 600 on FOX last May (3.87M), surprisingly outpacing all of last season’s playoff races (which aired opposite the NFL). Last year’s season finale from Phoenix averaged 3.21 million on NBC.

The crowd at the Coliseum was estimated by the LA Times to be around 50,000, so attendance was off from last year as well.

During the lead up to the Busch Light Clash At The Coliseum, some attendants were able to sign up and pay for a track walk. many who participated were able to leave a note on the painted Start/Finish Line of the temporary track. Image 1 - Shut Up And Sign "... notes from The EDJE."  Image 2 - Others inked an opinion - F-RIGHT - that supported oval racing in America as always turning Left. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2023)

To be honest, the current economy is tanking through inflation, which is a real modifier that effects everyone, especially since wages are not keeping up with the shifts caused through current economic policies. Attendance was enthusiastic and stadium-filling, especially for a non-points paying exhibition race. 

The jury was out on coming back to the Los Angeles Coliseum at this time last year and NASCAR closed in on a decision for year two. Is a year three in the offing? Only time will tell ... but the overall verdict is that the event was different, but still very good. 

If there is to be another Clash at the Coliseum in 2024, wrap it up in a celebration of ASCOT! Bring on another bite of the LA Avocado!

... notes from The EDJE

FEATURED ARTICLE >>>

TAGS: Busch Light Clash, 2023, Los Angeles Coliseum, NASCAR, NextGen, 7th Generation, Martin Truex, Gold, Austin Dillon, Silver, Kyle Busch, Bronze, Ralph Garcia, The EDJE

Auto Club 400 NASCAR Qualifications Format Renders A Stubbed Toe To Series

He was undefeated in each round of qualifying - @austindillon3 wins the #BuschPole! Image Credit: @ACSupdates (2019)

Auto Club 400 NASCAR Qualifications Format Renders A Stubbed Toe To Series

NASCAR fans who took Friday off from work were treated to a bone-headed display of over-reaching gamesmanship by all of the teams fielding the 38 cars (especially the top 12) set to participate in the Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Southern California's only NASCAR race of the 2019 season.

NASCAR reset the template of what propels these custom made representations of stock cars that adhere to a formula designed to equalise the competition in the field and reduce the overall costs associated with the equipment needed to participate in a 41 race 2019 season. This 2019 reset effectively reduced the horsepower while increasing the downforce which has the effect of keeping the cars glued to the track at lower speeds. The other effect that, at some tracks has missed the prediction, effects competition is some felt this would increase "pack racing" where the lead car punches through the air having the cars behind the lead car work less hard to achieve full speed until a group of cars pull out and around the lead car, passing at a greater speed overall thus having an advantage of having ones car squarely in the pack for a higher average speed.

With this background knowledge, and having the qualifications for NASCAR be the fastest speed achieved by the top 12 previous fast times during the third qualification round/session shootout to set the field (as opposed to having each car take to the track for a singular three lap try at a top speed as how it is done in IndyCar at oval track races), all of the teams waited until the last minute or so to attempt to put in a lap to be scored.

Consequently, no team was able to actually register a lap time at a race speed before the time of Qualification 3 round ran out causing the race director staff at NASCAR to make the call that the order would be set from the fastest lap times set during Qualification 2 round.

Fans were never treated to the race off by the 38 drivers - and the top 12 who will compete in the Auto Club 400 to see who will start at the most coveted positions at the head of the "PACK" ... which is exactly why many who follow motorsports competition would never become an embedded fan of NASCAR, ever.

This type of tepid race management and competition thinking is a blight on what it means to actually be in competition as a professional pursuit. If this were the only time this type of strategy (lay in wait and reduce the damage) were employed, then Friday's odd call to use the times achieved in Qualification 2 round in order to fill the top 12 of the field would amount to a stubbed toe in the landscape of professional stock car racing ... but this points to a much larger problem - over regulated over management of a racing template placed on formula racing.

Here's what others are observing from this somewhat unusual NASCAR Race Control call to set the top 12 of the field on Qualification 2 round track times achieved.

STARTING ORDER FOR AUTO CLUB 400 >>>

Penske Racing #22 AAA Southern California Ford Mustang of Joey Logano being pushed from Tech with the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains including Mt. Baldy in the background during Qualifications at Auto Club Speedway. Image Credit: Tom Stahler (2019)

This excerpted and edited from Crash.net -

Austin Dillon claims ACS pole after no one makes a time
By Josh Farmer

Austin Dillon takes pole in wacky qualifying session

Austin Dillon proved that you have to be lucky and good in qualifying for Sunday’s Auto Club 400 at the Auto Club Speedway.

The driver of the No. 3 Dow Chemical Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing led the first two 10-minute qualifying session on his way to his fourth career Busch Pole award. NASCAR reverted to the Q2 times when no driver posted an official time in the five-minute pole shootout.

With drafting key to a fast lap at the 2.0-mile superspeedway, drivers hesitated to make runs in all three sessions. The final group was the most extreme with no one taking off until less than a minute to go, which was too late for anyone to cross the start/finish line in time to turn a lap.

Every session featured a last-minute dash with nearly all drivers waiting until just over a minute to go to attempt their qualifying lap. Kurt Busch was the only driver to break the trend in Q2 and logged a lap of 40.644 seconds by himself.

The rest of the field took their laps with just over a minute and 15 seconds to go. When it was all said and done, Dillon was the man on top being the only driver in the 39-second bracket (39.982s).

Dillon, who also won the pole at ACS in 2016, noted that finding an open hole in the pack made all the difference in session two.

“That goes back to round two with Andy Houston (Dillon’s spotter), getting us a hole,” said Dillon. “Our Dow car has been good the whole day, I felt that it was the fastest car here. It feels good to get that pole.

The pole is Dillon's the fourth of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career.
[Reference Here]

As the Monster Energy Cup cars of NASCAR line up at the pit end line waiting for a good time to take the track and set a time for Qualifying, it looks like the traffic on the I-10 during rush hour. Image Credit: Image Credit: @ACSupdates (2019)

This excerpted and edited from Racer -

Boos send a message about the current state of NASCAR qualifying
By Kelly Crandall

NASCAR will look to have “something different in the queue” by the time Monster Energy Cup Series drivers show up to qualify at Texas Motor Speedway in two weeks.

After all 12 drivers advancing to the third and final round of qualifying at Auto Club Speedway on Friday failed to post even a single qualifying lap, Scott Miller, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, suggested tweaks would have to be made.

Ultimately, the top 12 for Sunday’s Auto Club 400 were determined based on second-round speeds, giving RCR’s Austin Dillon the pole.

“I saw obviously what our fans don’t want,” said Miller outside the NASCAR hauler after an all but silent final qualifying session. “Having the fastest 12 cars wait until they couldn’t get a time posted on the board, making kind of a mockery out of qualifying, is not what our fans expect.

“It’s a little bit on us in that we hoped things would go better than that. It’s an exciting show when they’re all out there on the race track, but obviously, there’s work to do [with the format] on our part so things like that don’t happen. We want to provide our fans with what they deserve, and we and the teams didn’t do a very good job of that today. We’re all really disappointed.”

In both the first and second rounds of qualifying, drivers sat at the end of pit road until late in the session. Then, charging onto the track, drivers tried to position themselves where they felt would be best in line to get a draft.

No one wanted to be the driver pulling the line and in the final round, no one was willing to leave the pits first.

Texas will be the next time the series qualifies at a track where a draft could come into play. Next weekend, the series visits the Martinsville short track.

“We will definitely make some tweaks to [qualifying], not quite sure what,” said Miller. “We don’t want to go back to single-car qualifying. There may not be another way, but we want to exhaust every possibility before we [go back] because that’s not as much fun, not as much of a show as the group situation.

“We’ll try to figure out a way to adjust the group qualifying thing and not go back to single car; but we got some work to do on that.”

Chase Elliott acknowledged no one wanted to be first out on the big Fontana track today. The Hendrick Motorsports driver doesn’t know what the fix should be, but said it was certainly entertaining to see drivers drafting and battling to set up the right gap to benefit from in the first two rounds.

Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer, who will start second and ninth respectively, said the fans in the grandstands clearly voiced their displeasure.

“We got booed,” said Bowyer. “It’s disappointing for everybody involved. I don’t know — I saw this coming three weeks ago. I think we all did. Unfortunately, we are going to have to be reactive instead of proactive.

“It’s a learning process, the whole package is. Everybody knew that going in, and everybody has been patient, but I am a little bit out of patience now with Fridays.

“There is so much hard work and dedication by so many teams to go out there and build the fastest car known to mankind inside the walls of their organization, and it just doesn’t matter. That is not racing.

“I feel like we are capable, as an industry, of putting on a better show than this. I know [NASCAR] will take the right [steps] to correct things, but unfortunately, it took something like today to [force] adjustment.”

“I think the crowd booing tells the story,” said Harvick, who deferred to NASCAR about whether a change in the format is necessary. “We do the best that we can, though, to try to put ourselves in the best position; and it was just a handful today.”

Fifth-place qualifier Joey Logano said his No. 22 Team Penske team blew it in the final round, but so did everyone else.

“That’s the game,” he said.

Ryan Newman qualified seventh but was another driver unhappy about how qualifying has played out recently.

“I don’t think that was a very successful use of TV time for our sponsors,” he said. “I told you all back in Vegas that I am still a big fan of single-car qualifying. That is all I need to say, really. That is the way qualifying should be.

“The gamesmanship that goes on now, the lack of giving it 100 percent — that’s not what qualifying is all about.

“But that is the program that NASCAR set forth, the rules they laid down and the box they put us in. Shame on us for not getting a lap in today.”
[Reference Here]

BOOS, Shame, and a less than satisfying Fan Experience was what NASCAR treated the crowd gathered for the only race scheduled for one of the largest concentration of humans a series could have and engage with - at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California.

Toe stubbed in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time - thanks for nuttin', NASCAR.

... notes from The EDJE




TAGS: Auto Club 400, Auto Club Speedway, Monster Energy Cup, NASCAR, Austin Dillon, No. 3 Dow Chemical Chevrolet, Richard Childress Racing, @ACSupdates, Tom Stahler, The EDJE