DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR president Steve Phelps spoke with reporters Friday as the sport prepares to kick off its 2021 season with Sunday’s Daytona 500.
Phelps addressed a range of topics, including track access, fan reactions to the Confederate flag ban and how the sanctioning body is evaluating its Cup charter system. Below are highlights from the session, which Phelps concluded with an optimistic comment that fell in line with how NASCAR’s broadcast partner Fox is billing the year.
“I think this is going to be our best season ever,” Phelps said.
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Phelps answered a question about if and how NASCAR is planning to evaluate teams who have a guaranteed charter or the charter system overall. NASCAR’s charter system allows 36 teams to purchase a charter that guarantees the team entry into the field for every Cup points race.
NASCAR has said that teams are held to a minimum performance standard and that the sanctioning body has the right to remove the charter if the team finishes in the bottom three of the owner standings among all 36 Chartered teams for three consecutive years. Some fans have been critical in recent years of teams that typically finish in the bottom of races and have called on NASCAR to revise its charter system to ensure more consistently competitive cars are in the field.
“We want to make sure that everyone is bringing a competitive race car to the racetrack,” Phelps said. “That is something we are very keen on having. If you’re not competing, this isn’t the right series for you. You should be competing in a different series.”
He said NASCAR is undertaking measures to ensure that the field has competitive cars, but didn’t outline specifics.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re putting out the best field we can,” Phelps said. “Obviously, someone needs to finish 40th, right, but we need to make sure that the ones that are finishing 40th don’t continue to be the same cars that are finishing 40th.”
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Phelps said that practice and qualifying sessions will likely return during the 2022 season, acknowledging that broadcast partners Fox and NBCSN want more NASCAR content that includes practice and qualifying. Last year, NASCAR limited practice and qualifying sessions during the pandemic, a policy that remains in 2021.
This year, eight of 36 races on the Cup schedule will hold practice and qualifying sessions beforehand. Those eight races will be the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, the new venues/configurations of Bristol’s dirt race, the Indy road course, Circuit of the Americas, Nashville and Road America, as well as the championship race at Phoenix.
One-day shows are expected for the rest of the Cup races, but Phelps said his feeling is that NASCAR will go back to holding practice and qualifying sessions in 2022.
As far as opening up access at races in the near future? That will depend on the pandemic. While Phelps said all NASCAR tracks are open to distributing the vaccine, no timeline was given for expanding access to media, fans or other nonessential racing personnel.
“When we get to a place where we have herd immunity, that is something we welcome — the time when we can have our media partners in the garage, in the media center, and our race fans.”
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Phelps’ opening comments included reiterating his pride around NASCAR’s stand on social justice and banning the Confederate flag last year.
“I think there was some question at the time: ‘Has NASCAR gone too far? They banned the Confederate flag. They’re taking a stand on social justice. Is that really something that a sport should do?’” Phelps said. “ … And the answer is yes.”
He acknowledged uncertainty around how the policy change and stance on social justice would affect the sport’s core fans, but said that NASCAR received a “brand tracker” for 2020 that included research about how avid fans felt about the stance NASCAR took on social justice and the banning of the Confederate flag. Phelps said fans were broken into three groups based on their years as an “avid” NASCAR fan and that all groups were more favorable to the changes than not.
“We are doing what we believe is right for our sport,” Phelps said. “I think that is something that we’re going to continue to do.”
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Phelps said he is “thrilled” with this year’s schedule, which includes multiple new venues and six road course races for the Cup Series.
“As I’ve said, it’s a bold schedule,” Phelps said. “This is something we’ve been waiting for for a long time, to be able to put out a schedule that looks like this one.”
He said that fans, OEMs and broadcast partners were all calling for more road course races. He also said that there will continue to be scheduling variation in the future in terms of venues and track configurations.
“As evidenced by what happened on Tuesday night (Busch Clash), I think that having stock cars on road courses works well,” Phelps said. “They’re slipping and sliding. It’s difficult. They get into each other, and it puts on great racing.”
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Also of note:
— Phelps said he expects coronavirus protocols to be largely the same this year: “Nothing’s perfect. We did have some cases, a couple high-profile drivers as well. But all in all, I think if you look at our protocols relative to other sports, I think it worked really well. I think our competitors felt safe and I think our drivers, for the most part, they’re very pleased.”
— He also addressed a question about NASCAR exclusively streaming its races but said it is “not something that’s on our radar.” (It was reported earlier this month that NBCUniversal plans to shut down NBC Sports Network at the end of the year and migrate its NASCAR broadcasts to NBC-owned cable channel USA Network. NBC’s streaming service Peacock was also mentioned as a possible future destination for NASCAR events.)
— Phelps also answered a question about incorporating electric cars into the sport as its manufacturers move toward electric vehicles. He said he doesn’t expect NASCAR would ever go all-electric, but there might still be a place for electric vehicles in the sport: “I don’t foresee a time in the future where we would go, with all of our series, to an all electric. I don’t see that,” Phelps said. “Could we have an exhibition series potentially? We could. That would be something that we might explore.”
