Only Yesterday: NASCAR Duels the Most Crucial in a Decade, But Can’t Match the Boom

As another season of racing begins, all eyes are on Daytona International Speedway and the Great American Race: NASCAR’s Super Bowl on asphalt. The season may be a grind, all about the road to the playoffs and crowning a champion, but the Daytona 500?

That’s about the show.

Even with today’s compressed schedule, with Speedweeks reduced to a few days thanks to the actual Super Bowl, the Daytona 500 is a spectacle. Bright cars spinning in endless circles with the danger of the Big One always lurking. It’s the same as it always was, and yet it’s completely different.

This year’s Daytona 500 features an entry list of 45 cars and drivers vying for 40 spots in the race. How they make it is both art in their mastery and the science under the hood. And, like everything else this week, it’s not like any other race.

Qualifying for the 500 is a spectacle of its own. With only the front row decided by traditional qualifying, all eyes are on Thursday night’s dual qualifying races, a pair of 150-mile tests that will send at least four drivers home before the real race even starts.

The whole deal is a little convoluted but has changed little overall over the years. The top two in Wednesday’s (Feb. 12) qualifying will start on the front row Sunday (Feb. 16), but behind them, it’s wide open. All 36 chartered teams will have a spot on Sunday, leaving four or five spots for all the rest to try to secure. The two fastest open cars in qualifying who don’t race in make the show, and if he doesn’t qualify on speed or in his qualifying race, four-time Indianapolis 500 champion Helio Castroneves will start anyway in 41st, via a special provisional designed to attract stars from other series to the show.

All of that means that the Duels on Thursday night are more important than they have been in years, with not just one but two former champions in Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr. among the drivers who can be sent packing.

But this is a history column. 

Recent history has turned the Duels into a shadow of their former glory. Even adding points for the to- 10 finishers doesn’t make drivers take the chance of crashing their cars before the main event.

The charter system (and the top 35 rule before it) made the Duels both anticlimactic and even more pressure-packed for the cars not locked in. In recent years, maybe a couple of cars have gone home before racing on Sunday, usually backmarkers and one-offs.

But it wasn’t always like that. 

Fans who came to NASCAR after 2010 have never seen more than a half-dozen cars fail to qualify for the Great American Race. There are a number of factors that play into the decline of entries (hold that thought), but during the years of NASCAR’s meteoric rise in popularity and subsequent growth, the DNQs were in the double digits.

Between 1990 and 2010, fewer than 10 cars missed the race just four times. In 1990, 1994 and 1995, no fewer than 20 went home empty-handed, with 27 DNQs and withdrawals in ‘94 topping the list. Upwards of 15 was a common occurrence.

Usually, it was smaller teams who got the short end of the stick, but not always. Owners like Chip Ganassi, Jack Roush, Rick Hendrick and Dale Earnhardt, Inc. also felt the sting. Popular racers and race winners were not immune.

2011 was the beginning of a mass change; since then, no more than six too many cars have come to Daytona. 

But why? The Duels allow an underdog to squeeze in, even under the current rules. Why not try to secure a starting spot in the biggest event of the year?

In the 1990s and early 2000s, NASCAR was in a massive boom. Everyone wanted to be a part of it, and for fans, that meant loyalty: buying products because they were on a racecar, and if there were competing products, they’d choose the one that backed their favorite driver or manufacturer.

NASCAR was everywhere and on everything from breakfast cereal to laundry detergent. Fans lapped it up. Commercials for driver-endorsed products were elaborate productions with drivers featured front and center, wearing their branded firesuits, of course. Some were the subjects of more conversations than that week’s race.

Fans felt connected to their heroes and they were happy.

Sponsors saw fans buying their products and they were happy.

Teams had money to race with, and race competitively, and they were happy.

Early in the boom, $10 million would put a competitive team on track for a season, but as sponsors scrambled for space on racecars and upped the offers, that price went up.

Teams could afford more stuff: more cars and parts and instruments and contraptions to make them go faster. Their fans loved it.

With fans glued to their TVs looking for more racing, sponsorship value soared, whether it be on the hood of a racecar or on the TV whenever cars were on the track. Being seen was everything. 

Even smaller teams could attract good sponsors for the Daytona 500. Purse money was also high and flowed through the field. A last-place finish paid well.

So the teams came. Small teams tried to make one race count. Big teams put another car on the track. Part-time teams looked to bankroll more races.

Sponsors knew they might only get qualifying and their Duel, and they were okay with that because being seen on a car was advertising gold. 

But times change.

To a degree, the decline was inevitable, because even the biggest, best fads fade. Fans weren’t watching every lap the cars were on track, so the value of just showing up dropped, and advertisers looked for other ways to sell their wares.

The cost of fielding a team didn’t drop, though, and after a while, bringing an underfunded car didn’t mean the return on investment it once had. The charter system restructured race purses so that unchartered teams make a pittance even if they make the race and manage a strong finish.

The teams share some of the blame. They priced themselves out of the market when times were good; even very good teams have fallen behind.

Fans have changed, too. They don’t choose products simply because they’re on racecars, and sponsors have shifted to more business products than direct-to-consumer. They’re selling to other sponsors and business partners as well as race fans.

Seeing 45 teams on the entry list is positive growth. It’s a far cry from 60 or 70, but it’s the most since the car count dropped to 40 in 2016. 

NASCAR thrives on uncertainty, and because of that, the Duels are still relevant every year. 

Keeping NASCAR’s past relevant on some levels is important. As the new season begins, the rhythm of the track, the hum of the cars, the drivers putting it all out there for wins; it’s different now, to be sure. But it’s also the familiar beat that draws us back in, week after week, year after year.

Despite the changes, despite the knocks, the story goes on. That all starts this week, with the desperation of the Duels and the list of drivers who will go home before the green flag flies on NASCAR’s biggest day. Will a past champion be among them? 

It’s a new question for a new season, but it’ll be answered the same old way. Pieces of NASCAR’s past still drive its present.