The headline says it all.
Which is a bizarre statement to make and one I didn’t think I would have to make given recent history.
The last three years, which marked the first three seasons of the Next Gen car era for the NASCAR Cup Series, were a gift to a select few tracks on the schedule.
Specifically, the tracks that spent the previous decade in the dog house among NASCAR Nation: intermediates.
Charlotte Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway (less so than the others), Darlington Raceway, Homestead Miami-Speedway and the focus of this column, the 24-year-old Kansas Speedway.
Before the Next Gen car’s debut in 2022, no one with half a mind was ever excited about the prospect of a Cup race at Kansas Speedway.
Blame the track, blame rules packages or blame the turn of the century obsession with building 1.5-mile tracks. Kansas sucked.
But then the Next Gen car arrived to rescue (most) intermediates from a decade of scorn. Suddenly, Kansas Speedway shot to the top echelon of tracks.
Going into Sunday’s (May 11) Cup race, the track was being described as a breath of fresh air after a disappointing stretch of racing at tracks where the Next Gen can’t find a life line: Bristol Motor Speedway, Martinsville Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. Tracks that are supposed to be backbone of NASCAR.
Somehow, Kansas Speedway became a reliable facility.
How else can you describe a track that gave us Kurt Busch‘s dramatic battle in 2022 that resulted in his final career win, Denny Hamlin‘s last-lap pass for the win over Kyle Larson in the spring of 2023 and then last spring, Larson squeezing by Chris Buescher in the closest finish in Cup Series history.
For three years, Kansas built up credibility as one of the most exciting tracks on the schedule.
Then Sunday came.
I went out the back door of Kansas’ infield media center and took this picture of the frontstretch grandstands moments before the command to start engines.
If you can make out the Kansas Speedway lettering in the colored bleachers, that’s a bad sign.
Before you start saying “Don’t race on Mother’s Day!” (even though NASCAR races on Father’s Day and no one complains and every other major spring sport holds events on Mother’s Day), this is pretty much what the grandstands looked like before last fall’s Cup event.
And that was a playoff race.
The number of tracks that should arguably have two race weekends in a season is very small, and with the downturn in competition with the Next Gen car, it has gotten smaller.
Even if the car performed great everywhere, my list would consist of Daytona, Talladega, Bristol, Martinsville and Darlington.
But the Bristol of 2025 doesn’t. The racing is nothing like the track’s heyday of the 2000s, and the fans aren’t showing up for the spring race. That’s why they went to dirt for three years.
This spring, Martinsville, which was the best short track on the circuit in the late 2010s and the first couple of years of the 2020s, had possibly the most sparse crowd I’ve seen for a race there that wasn’t affected by the weather.
NASCAR’s new commissioner, Steve Phelps, is on record saying NASCAR has no qualms with taking away dates from tracks if they don’t sell out.
Just look at Richmond Raceway, a track that was nearly surrounded by grandstands at the turn of the century, finally losing its second date to Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Sure, he included the caveat for tracks where the “racing is extraordinary.” Kansas has put on the definition of extraordinary for three years. Yet it’s nowhere close to selling out.
Meanwhile, tracks that have gone to a single race date in recent years are thriving. According to the FOC broadcast two weeks ago, Texas Motor Speedway — which was the sport’s punching bag for years — had its best attendance in 15 years. Pocono Raceway has sold out for the last two years.
You could make the argument that attendance numbers don’t matter anymore, given that most of NASCAR’s money comes from its new $7.7 billion TV deal.
But you know what? Optics matter. And no one can argue that Kansas’ half-empty grandstands, after multiple years of excellent racing, looks good.
NASCAR could do what’s been done to other tracks: Take out seats or replace seats with drink railings. Kansas already has done something similar in an area toward turn 1, where instead of normal seats, fans can sit in chairs that look one you’d find on your grandma’s front porch.
Or it can just take away one of its race dates and use it somewhere where there’s actual demand or in an untapped market.
If it can happen to Richmond, Michigan, Pocono and Texas, it should happen to Kansas.
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.