Spring has sprung, and with it comes NASCAR’s annual visit to the Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Fla.
Something about that sentence just doesn’t sound right.
NASCAR racing at Homestead in March isn’t completely new. In March 2019, it was announced that Homestead would be the sixth race of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, taking place the following March.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic derailed those plans. But in 2021, Homestead was the third race of the Cup season, taking place on Feb. 28. It was — and still is — the earliest in the season a Cup event there has taken place.
On Sunday, March 23, Homestead will play host to the sixth race of the 2025 Cup season. It’s the sixth year in a row that Homestead has been removed from its traditional finale date, but the first time since 2021 that it won’t be run in the fall.
Regardless of whether Homestead is the championship race or another playoff race, running it this early in the season simply feels … off.
From 1999 to 2019, Homestead was either the last or second-to-last race on the schedule. From 2002 to 2019, the 1.5-mile facility hosted the finale for all three NASCAR series.
(Ford Championship Weekend still stirs nostalgia in me to this day.)
The issue of whether or not Homestead should play host to the championship race is a dead horse that’s been beaten like a drum since 2019. Regardless of your feelings regarding Homestead’s candidacy for the finale, the fact is that it’s not known whether or not the the track will return to its former date any time soon.
Even if its not the venue that crowns champions, however, Homestead deserves more than a relatively routine March date.
Certain tracks have proven, either through prestige or their racing product, that they deserve to be in a prominent spot on the NASCAR schedule. Every Cup race is a big deal, but a regular-season race in March or June doesn’t hold the same weight as a race in the Round of 8, much less the finale.
Homestead has provided NASCAR with incredible racing, and rather than at least leaving it in the playoffs, Talladega Superspeedway was substituted into its spot in the postseason’s penultimate round. Some speculated that this change was made in order to give the city and the track ample time to prepare for a potential championship date in 2026, but so far, no announcement regarding the finale’s return has surfaced.
Homestead was moved to the Round of 8 from 2022 to 2024, and every year, great moments surfaced. In 2022, Martin Truex Jr. encountered an unfortunate pit road mishap that essentially handed Kyle Larson the win. In 2023, Larson was attempting to pass Ryan Blaney for the race lead until he overdrove his Chevy en route to pit road and hit the sand barrels at pit entry.
In October 2024, Tyler Reddick, Blaney and Denny Hamlin battled for the win in one of the best races of the 2024 season. Reddick won the race and earned a Championship 4 berth with an iconic last-lap pass.
When Homestead was the finale, there was no shortage of other iconic moments. Including:
- 2004: Kurt Busch wins first playoffs after near miss with the pit road wall
- 2005: Greg Biffle beats Mark Martin in a photo finish
- 2010: Jimmie Johnson wins fifth-straight title after Hamlin’s early spin
- 2011: Tony Stewart beats Carl Edwards for the title in a nailbiter due to tiebreaker
- 2015: Kyle Busch completes wild comeback from injury to win title
- 2016: Johnson wins seventh title after Edwards and Joey Logano tangle late
- 2017: Truex completes storybook title season
- 2018: Logano passes Truex late to beat the Big 3
Kyle Busch’s second championship in 2019 closed the book on Homestead’s run as the site of NASCAR’s finale, giving way to Phoenix Raceway as the new home of NASCAR’s championship weekend.
Phoenix isn’t an awful racetrack by any means, but nothing about it screams championship host.
Homestead, meanwhile, seems like the ideal choice for a championship venue. It’s in a vibrant market and produces great racing, and while the facilities are behind those of Phoenix, an upgrade would make it seemingly impossible for NASCAR to say no to giving Homestead the finale again, or at the very least a playoff date.
Regardless of Homestead’s future, one thing is certain: It’s simply weird to see it on the schedule this early in the season, even if the track has been devoid of the finale for over half a decade.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.