Since 1982, the Daytona 500 has been the opening race of the Cup Series season. It is held amidst a lot of fanfare and kicks off the year with all the festivities that are due.
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Being a Daytona 500 champion is one of the greatest achievements in stock car racing. Despite all this, Chase Elliott has one particular concern with the crown jewel event: its date.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver was on The MeatEater Podcast when he told the hosts that he wished the Daytona 500 wasn’t the opening race of the season since it was too huge not to matter more in deciding who the season’s champion is.
He said, “I wish there was a better way to have it positioned in a different spot, selfishly, because it is such a big event and it’s such a great event.”
He compared it to the Super Bowl and pointed out how it differed since it did not crown the champion. It is more along the lines of the Masters or the U.S. Open, which are marquee sporting events that fall in the middle of the season. So, could the Daytona 500 practically be moved to a different date?
Traditions are what NASCAR is all about. The Great American Race has been the season-opener for 43 years long years and the promotion is not under any pressure to forgo this tradition now. NASCAR’s Executive Vice President, Ben Kennedy, made this extremely clear for everyone in an interview a couple of weeks ago.
How fans led NASCAR to not change the Daytona 500’s date
“We would like to continue to see it as our opener,” he said. “I think we’ll continue to have the Clash prior to the 500. It’s a great opportunity for us to build up some momentum in anticipation of our biggest event of the year, the Daytona 500, and the new season ahead. We’ll continue to keep it in that spot.”
When asked the reasoning for this decision, Kennedy revealed that they’d ran a survey two years back that told them how over 95% of fans wanted the race to open the season. In the face of this, there is not a lot that Elliott nor any other individual can do to shift the race to a different spot on the calendar.
The Daytona International Speedway, however, will not play as the destination of the season-ending race anytime soon. It is a superspeedway-style track and the promotion is, fortunately, far too fixated on the idea that such tracks are too volatile to decide the Cup Series champion on.
