Michael Jordan, Pitbull signal needed new era as NASCAR returns to Homestead this week | Opinion

NASCAR feels different as it returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway this weekend for the main-race Dixie Vodka 400 on Sunday after Saturday’s undercard Xfinity Series race.

It still feels different for the wrong reasons as the ongoing COVID-19 threat entering its second year continues to limit crowds and drivers’ time at the track.

It feels different in good ways now, too, though.

There is a newness at play, a fresh breeze. This is not your grandfather or even your father’s NASCAR with its redneck roots harking to its birth in the segregated late 1940s. The sport’s recent disassociation with the Confederate flag stands towering at the forefront. So does white drivers uniting to make that anti-racism video last summer as the streets filled with protest.

We see a sport once stuck for so long in Deep South mores going national, attracting millennial eyes, entering the 21st Century.

“NASCAR is trending up,” as Homestead track president Al Garcia.

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 threat Homestead is being allowed only 18 percent of its capacity this weekend, or up to 10,000 race fans.

But that’s progress. When Homestead hosted its previous NASCAR race last June it became the first major American league sport to allow any fans back at all, and it was 1,000 invited guests encompassing local military and first-responders.

Homestead hosted NASCAR’s November championship weekend, its final, crowning race, for 18 straight years from 2002-19 before the prestigious finale was switched to Phoenix. It was a major loss for South Florida, but Garcia finds a positive in what he hopes will be a permanent new calendar niche in late February.

“Barring having the championship I think this is the perfect time for us,” he told the Miami Herald this week. “We’re not competing with the Miami Hurricanes or Dolphins. And NASCAR awareness is at ts height coming off the heels of the [season opening] Daytona 500.”

NASCAR awareness is buoyed by more than that. Look around at who’s getting on board.

Basketball icon Michael Jordan joined top driver Denny Hamlin to form 23X1 Racing earlier this month, and chose Bubba Wallace as their driver. That’s Jordan, among the biggest names in American sports history, aligning with the sport’s only current Black driver, the man whose raised voice led to the Confederate flag.

At Daytona this month Wallace became the first Black driver to lead a lap. His watershed first victory is a story waiting to happen, and Jordan (expected to attend Sunday’s race) is behind it all now.

“He’s just a big fan,” said Hamlin of Jordan. “Now he’s embedded in it very heavily.”

Miami rapper Pitbull, Mr. 305, Mr. Worldwide, has lent his international fame to the Trackhouse Racing team as a new part owner. In their car is Mexican Daniel Suarez, the first Latino driver to compete in a full season.

“We’re going to show the world NASCAR is not only a sport but it’s a culture,” said Pitbull. “This is a revolution.”

What for decades was a good ol’ boys club of white men is beginning to see small signs of diversity, the fruit of the sport’s Drive For Diversity initiative that helps encourage and develop Black, Hispanic and women drivers.

New Orleans Saints star running back Alvin Kamara is on board now, too. The Confederate flag ban and Wallace’s activism last summer caught his eye. He attended his first race last June at Homestead. He has become an evangelist for the sport within the NFL.

“This is not the sport that someone who looks like me would be into. I’m being realistic,” Kamara said. “But I feel like I’m part of it now.”

Young drivers are noticing.

“Its unreal,” said young second-year driver Cole Custer. “To see new people getting in is exciting. The more we can be inclusive, the better.”

The fresh breeze sweeping across NASCAR also includes a more varied schedule with the addition of new venues, new markets. It includes an e-Sports version.

Heck, in 2021, Roush Fenway Racing has become the first team to be certified carbon neutral. What!? NASCAR going green? Something is going on here.

The newness extends to the drivers themselves. A new wave is happening.

Old stars recently have retired. Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Danica Patrick, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart.

Plenty of popular, familiar-name veterans remain, such as Hamlin (who won at Homestead last June), Joey Logano, the Busch brothers, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman and Martin Truex Jr.

But into the mix arrives a new wave, led by Chase Elliott, stepping up to challenge to be The Next Big Thing. He won five races last season and was second at Homestead. He won the NASCAR Cup season championship, at age 24, to end the year.

This year, two first-time winners have won the season’s first two races in Michael McDowell at the Daytona 500 and Christopher Bell at the Daytona Road Course. That hasn’t happened in NASCAR since 1960.

Might another first-time winner arise at Homestead on Sunday? Might iteven be Bubba Wallace?

NASCAR finds itself full of possibilities these days, a good place to be.