For a moment, this was late 1990s NASCAR all over again.
While not the waiting list sellout of yore, this was objectively one of the better attended Cup Series races at Bristol Motor Speedway during this decade, and those in attendance were subjected to a red carpet affair before the race even began.
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There was a version of NASCAR that attracted some of the biggest names in Hollywood and the Bristol Night Race harkened back to this era. Brad Pitt gave the command to fire engines, which then triggered IndyCar Series ace Josef Newgarden to drive the pace car off pit road.
The field included a car sponsored by professional wrestling legend Ric Flair, who was flanked on Saturday by daughter Charlotte, a Hall of Famer in her own right. Also, in attendance watching was a likely NFL Hall of Famer in recently retired Russell Wilson too. Brian Kelley of Florida Georgia line performed the pre-race concert.
Again, before the race even began, there was a certain electricity in the air.
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During a press conference earlier in the afternoon, Flair encouraged NASCAR drivers to show more passion and fire and be willing to fight.
“If they’re mad, they want to kick somebody’s ass, go kick it,” Flair said. “Just make sure they take their helmet off. They need to fight with their helmets on. Just get the helmet off and then smack them. I want to see the real emotion and I think that’s cool.
“If you’re trying to tell me they don’t get mad at each other out there, bumping each other around, I would say you’re incorrect. I’m sure that they’re not all best friends. This sport is too competitive and insensitive.”
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That proved to be quite prescient.
The 18th lap was one of the most powerful visuals of recent memory, a large crowd in Thunder Valley waving a yellow towel in memory of the late Kyle Busch as Ty Gibbs drove a throwback paint scheme in his honor.
Not even a brief thunderstorm before the race could damper the enthusiasm of those who showed up.
Say what you will about Carson Hocevar, but he is a lightning rod who absolutely makes everything around him incredibly more interesting. Last Saturday at Gateway was one of the most exciting days at the track watching everyone respond to the budding feud between the Spire Motorsports driver and RFK Racing.
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They hate him — literally everyone in the field hates Carson Hocevar.
Kyle Larson said he even wanted to see Brad Keselowski wreck Hocevar in front of him, if it was indeed inevitable that it was going to happen at some point. It didn’t happen last week. Instead, Hocevar was involved in yet another incident, this time one that he wasn’t egregiously responsible for when Ryan Blaney blocked a crossover and got sent into the wall.
For all the lamenting that ‘NASCAR is not as good as it used to be,’ this Bristol Night Race wasn’t that dissimilar from the ones everyone talks about from the ’90s. Back then, there was a lot of riding around on the bottom, until the very end, where a handful of races involved some version of a dump-and-run.
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Blaney then told reporters outside of infield care that he intended to talk to Hocevar after the race and ‘something was going to happen.’ What would happen? ‘I don’t know yet.’
So, there was absolutely a buzz over the final laps of the race, one won remarkably by Joey Logano when Hocevar, Ty Gibbs and Kyle Larson all started bouncing off each other. Logano, for some reason, is a bit of a lightning rod himself so the fans were booing during the Team Penske No. 22 celebration as well.
They were making noise and they would soon be distracted by the moment that very well could go down in NASCAR history.
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Blaney had seen enough, not just to him, but to his peers. Regardless of who you side with, there was a degree of inevitability in this storyline, one that had been building all summer in a way that is so very peak NASCAR.
Earnhardt, Wallace
Harvick, Rudd
Spencer, Busch
Stewart, Logano
Hamlin, Logano
Kenseth, Logano
Hocevar, everyone
This sort of interpersonal animosity is very much integral to everything that people say made NASCAR great around the turn of the century. Once again, that dynamic was best summed up by Flair.
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“I think NASCAR fans, and wrestling fans, they have a lot in common,” Flair said. “Find someone they follow. Very similar to wrestling, they have a favorite, they have someone they don’t like. It’s like when Jeff (Gordon) and Dale (Earnhardt) Sr. were going at it. It’s the kid from California versus a redneck from my part of the country.
“The ratings were never better than they were back then. You have to have a good guy and a bad guy.
To wit, Logano is equally good for business, defying the odds in a championship format that was designed as a response to him winning three championships in eight years despite a body of work that some fans felt was not befitting of the title.
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This won’t change their minds either given he was 19th in points three months ago, but Logano has a way of making people feel something too. It goes back to an old adage attributed to Earnhardt:
“It doesn’t matter if they boo or cheer, as long as they’re making noise.”
But gosh, this format is forcing NASCAR enthusiasts to also focus on the things that matter. Instead of an every third race elimination race, the championship focus is on Logano, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson — big personalities that generate a lot of noise in their own right.
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NASCAR had a lot of characters in the late 90s and early 2000s that made fans feel. It wasn’t so much the racing product or the championship format that won over hearts and minds but charismatic personas that made them feel part of something bigger.
This sport lost some of that when the likes of Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart all retired.
In Hocevar, a student of the game who loves watching throwback content from that era, NASCAR has such a personality that brings out the most of everyone around him. Hollywood and Rock and Roll is noticing, and most importantly, fans are noticing.
This is how 1998 comes back.
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