The debate gets ignited every season, and that’s because it’s one worth having – should NASCAR return the championship race to Miami and leave its current location at Phoenix?
The question seems like a simple one, but in reality, it gets much more complicated, which is evidenced by the discussion amongst the Frontstretch staffers each and every time the conversation gets brought to light. This week, that issue deserves a look from both sides.
Homestead Had Its Moment In The Sunshine
Homestead-Miami Speedway is a great race track. Full stop. The combination of progressive banking, tire wear and the ability that the drivers have to use all three lanes to their advantage make it the perfect type of track to host the NASCAR Cup Series championship. However, there’s one problem with that sentiment.
It already did. From 2002-2019, Homestead hosted the penultimate race of the season, and served as the hallowed ground upon which NASCAR champions from all walks of life were crowned the winners of their respective seasons. There were plenty of greats to come through that series of drivers, too, like Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. There were a fair share of one-off wins that stick out in the mind, too, like Matt Kenseth in 2003 or Kevin Harvick in 2014.
All that was well and good, but it serves as the main point of this argument – Homestead had its time, and now that time has passed. Additionally, while Phoenix hasn’t had as much time as its predecessor, its time has passed, too. This is the not-so-rare situation where both things can be true.
The NASCAR Cup Series championship is not something that needs to have one home for more than five years. Like the Super Bowl, it needs to move around the country, providing access to those in the area who would enjoy it the most. Think about it this way: are there NASCAR fans in Phoenix, Arizona? Sure. Are there NASCAR fans in south Florida? Sure there are. But the majority of NASCAR fans reside other places, and simply won’t make the trip to see a race that far away from where they live.
Additionally, it makes absolutely zero sense to have the championship anywhere but in the heartland of NASCAR country for a five-year stretch. While there are plenty of fans in Phoenix and south Florida, I would bet my last dollar that there are more per capita in and around the larger Southeastern United States. Obviously, nobody is proposing that a superspeedway or drafting track like Talladega or Atlanta be used for the championship. No, there are plenty of better options than that.
For instance, Charlotte is about as perfect as it can be. Is it a bit predictable? Sure. However, it’s smack-dab in the heart of NASCAR country, and the teams and drivers would absolutely love it. The poeticism of NASCAR returning to its roots to finish out each year would play well nobody who was there watching, and the racing would be as good as it has been at Charlotte over the past few seasons, which is by no means poor.
However, I’d like to propose a different location, allowing for some modifications to be made to the track and the area around it.
Enter, Nashville. Before throwing stones, let me explain those modifications. Within a few years, funds should be available to push the track up from its 1.33-mile distance to a full 1.5-mile track, which is what most people would consider to be ideal when it comes to the actual race distance. Additionally, changes would need to be made to the parking and traffic situation around the race, as anyone who’s been can tell you it’s a nightmare in its current form.
However, the location is absolutely perfect. Nestled deep in the heart of the southeast with a well-functioning airport nearby for fans and teams to travel into, the city is bristling with the southern-charm-infused nightlife that feels like it could blend perfectly into making the NASCAR Championship weekend at least close to as big of an event as the season’s first race.
Sure, it might be a pipe dream to have NASCAR’s championship race at a place like Nashville, but with the right additions to the track and infrastructure, should it really be a pipe dream after all? –Tanner Marlar
NASCAR Fixed Something That Wasn’t Broken
Raise your hand if you’re sick and tired of watching professional racing drivers shoot through the infield at a track that most of the fan base couldn’t care less about during the regular season.
If your hand is up, you’ve got a more than valid point. Time and time again now, NASCAR champions have been decided by the nearly-crapshoot race that takes place at the end of each year at Phoenix. That doesn’t mean that any of the recent champions weren’t deserving – after all, most of them won the race. However, it does mean that there’s no reason NASCAR should ever host its championship at a place where the actual racing plays second fiddle to whatever else is going on at that point and time.
Let me clarify that last statement with another. This weekend, the Cup series will travel to Homestead-Miami, where the racing will be sublime in comparison to most other tracks on the schedule. The drivers themselves will be front and center, having to navigate a tricky track with its tire wear, banking and aged surface giving them fits. They’ll actually have to drive, which is something that the Next Gen car has been lacking since its inception.
That same track is where NASCAR hosted its championship for years, and it’s for those very same reasons. It’s one of the few tracks left on the schedule now in which it truly is a man vs. machine battle on every single lap.
Now, take that mental image and compare it to Phoenix, where drivers can just cut across the dogleg whenever they feel like it, can simply downshift when they screw up and stay in the pack, and generally put on a boring race right up until the white flag waves when all hell breaks loose. The two don’t begin to compare.
To top it all off, Homestead had sold out the last five championship races it held, and with the fanbase growing weary of Phoenix, it wouldn’t shock me if there are some empty seats there as soon as this season.
If the point of moving on from Miami was to make the championship a mobile event, like the Super Bowl for instance, then fine. I’ll buy into that logic. But if that was the case, why has it been stuck there ever since? It’s time to move the championship once again, and in doing so, it’s time to return it to where it rightfully belongs, where legacies were cemented, where records were broken, and where the racing was actually fun.
It’s time to return the championship to Miami. –Mike Neff
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for TopSpeed.com, an AP Wire reporter, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host and master's student at Mississippi State University. Soon, Tanner will be pursuing a PhD. in Mass Media Studies. Tanner began working with Frontstretch as an Xfinity Series columnist in 2022.
What is it that Mike Neff doesn’t do? The writer, radio contributor and racetrack announcer coordinates the site’s local short track coverage, hitting up Saturday Night Specials across the country while tracking the sport’s future racing stars. The writer for our signature Cup post-race column, Thinkin’ Out Loud (Mondays) also sits down with Cup crew chiefs to talk shop every Friday with Tech Talk. Mike announces several shows each year for the Good Guys Rod and Custom Association. He also pops up everywhere from PRN Pit Reporters and the Press Box with Alan Smothers to SIRIUS XM Radio. He has announced at tracks all over the Southeast, starting at Millbridge Speedway. He's also announced at East Lincoln Speedway, Concord Speedway, Tri-County Speedway, Caraway Speedway, and Charlotte Motor Speedway.