NASCAR will spend “significantly more” than $1 million to stage this weekend’s Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Coliseum, a NASCAR official confirmed Monday.
“It’s been a significant investment by NASCAR,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer.
While he declined to reveal the cost of building a quarter-mile paved track inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, O’Donnell said of Sunday’s exhibition race: “We made a big bet on this, but we think it’s the right thing to do for the industry.”
He said during a conference call with reporters that more than 70% of the ticket buyers for the Clash had not purchased tickets to a NASCAR event before. O’Donnell also noted the six hours of broadcast coverage on Fox that NASCAR and the event will receive.
Whether the Clash is held annually in the Coliseum or moves elsewhere will be based on how this weekend’s event goes. O’Donnell hinted that there could be other locations to host the event, including some “outside the U.S.”
“When you look at investments, particularly from our standpoint, we’re going to be bold and aggressive if we feel like that’s a way towards future growth,” O’Donnell said.
He also noted there could be places that hark back to the sport’s roots that NASCAR could consider in the future for this exhibition race.
As for this weekend’s event, NASCAR announced various procedures:
- Teams will be divided into three sessions for practice. Each group will have three eight-minute sessions. There are 36 cars entered.
- Qualifying order will be inverted based on last year’s owner points. That means reigning Cup champion Kyle Larson will be the last to make a qualifying attempt.
- Caution laps will not count in the heat races, last chance qualifying races and 150-lap Clash.
- There will be a break at Lap 75 of the Clash. The break is expected to be about six minutes.
