Is it just me, or have the last couple weeks been a little … quiet?
Thanks in no small part to the TV overlords at NBCUniversal, who own the rights to the second half of the NASCAR Cup Series season and the NTT IndyCar Series (for now) as well as some other sporting event that I’m told is currently happening over in France, American racetracks for the last several weeks haven’t seen quite as much action as usual.
After Kyle Larson took the checkered flag to win the 30th anniversary Brickyard 400 two Sundays ago (July 21), NASCAR’s three national touring series won’t turn a single lap until Craftsman Truck Series practice begins at Richmond Raceway on Saturday, Aug. 10. IndyCar, similarly, is in the midst of a nearly month-long break between racing on the streets of Toronto and the oval at Worldwide Technology Raceway. And, after a Mercedes one-two-turned-one-DNQ at the Belgian Grand Prix, Formula 1 has entered its own four-week summer break.
While it’s fun to finally see my friends who don’t care about F1 have their turn to wake up in the wee hours of the morning and watch obscure sporting events live from Western Europe, I’ve been feeling surprisingly relaxed.
Don’t get me wrong, I love racing. It’s usually the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. My desk has a frankly irresponsible number of diecast cars on it, and most days I have to actively look for a shirt that doesn’t have a car on it to wear to work.
But you know what? A couple weeks in the middle of summer pretending to be a normal person is nice, and I’m usually just watching from the couch. Spare a thought for those whose obsession with speed sees them traveling 38 weekends a year between February and November. NASCAR has the longest season in professional sports, and the motorsports industry has some of the most dedicated people you’ll find.
They say that if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. But I say — seventy pounds of bricks, seventy pounds of feathers, or a mounted Goodyear Eagle — your lower back can’t tell what it’s lifting.
IMSA and NASCAR mechanic Bozi Tatarevic has frequently discussed the effect that the extended Cup Series schedule has on mechanics and crew members.
Apart from the risk of burnout (the bad kind) that accompanies a career chasing burnouts (the good kind), the people that make our beloved sport happen almost every week, from the superstar drivers to the officials, the broadcast crew and, of course, the team members have to hammer their lives into shape around 38 weekends of travel a year.
It’s nice for their families when they can get married in months other than December or January.
It’s not quite the hottest of takes any more, as F1’s recent popularity explosion has created a significant base of American racing fans who simply expect to switch off the TV for a couple Sundays in July and August.
The FIA is so committed to giving its teams some time off that the F1 summer break is written into the rulebook, with Article 21.8 requiring a two-week mandatory shutdown of all competitive activity, including “car design, development [and] parts production” for two weeks in the summer.
And yes, as the F1 calendar has ballooned to a once-unbelievable 24 Grands Prix (and forget about the Sprints), the summer break has stood as an unimpeachable monument to the traditional European summer holiday. But it was actually introduced for the 2009 season as a cost-cutting measure in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
As the Next Gen era’s promise to make Cup racing less expensive is, at best, less-than-realized, it might be worth adding a mandatory vacation to the cost-cutting cocktail – for the Cup Series, I mean. The Xfinity Series gets five more off-weekends than the Cup garage does (including the non-points events), and in 2023, the last non-Olympic year, the Truck Series got two-week breaks in April, June and October.
Next year, NASCAR’s first in-season tournament will start on June 28 at Atlanta Motor Speedway and run for five races. After that, the NASCAR Cup Series garage should shut down for the first two weeks of August.
Then, after two weeks of weddings and scuba diving, cookouts and golf, the final push to the playoffs should begin with stock car racing’s second-biggest race: the newly-reborn Brickyard 400, and from there, run straight into the postseason.
Transforming the quad-annual Olympic break into a yearly tradition would offer a well-deserved break to the hardworking people of the motorsports industry. It would give everyone a chance for a mindset change before crunch time, offer potential new fans a ready-made entry point to playoff bubble drama (some of the most thrilling highs and lows the NASCAR season has to offer) and finally establish a traditional calendar spot for the only Crown Jewel that doesn’t have one.
Yes, I know that the TV overlords who demanded a temporary cessation of stock car racing so the world can pay attention to handball are the same as those who demand all-but-weekly action from America’s favorite motorsport every other year. I know IndyCar has the opposite problem. And I don’t have the foggiest idea what the longer overlap with football season would do for the all-important ratings.
But sometimes, you just need a vacation.
About the author
Jack Swansey primarily covers open-wheel racing for Frontstretch and co-hosts The Pit Straight Podcast,but you can also catch him writing about NASCAR, sports cars, and anything else with four wheels and a motor. Originally from North Carolina and now residing in Los Angeles, he joined the site as Sunday news writer midway through 2022 and is an avid collector (some would say hoarder) of die-cast cars.
A daily email update (Monday through Friday) providing racing news, commentary, features, and information from Frontstretch.com
We hate spam. Your email address will not be sold or shared with anyone else.
F1 still had their race. I don’t think the Nascar crowd is going to be that interested in the Olympics. Then again, there’s always the DVR. Maybe take off Mother’s Day again.