NASCAR’s All-Star Race is tonight at Bristol, and it is complicated. There are two races. Everyone is racing but not everyone is an All-Star. Some guy named Justin Haley is starting fourth in the main event.
The very premise of a NASCAR All-Star Race is questionable at first glance. After you think about it for a minute, it makes sense, but for that minute before you think about it, no sense is made. Why does a series in which every driver competes in every race need an All-Star Race? Is not every race an All-Star Race? The obvious answer is marketing, but the second answer is that they actually just take away the non-All-Star drivers for the main event and run with a smaller field of only All-Stars, so the nobodies don’t clog up the field. See? Makes sense, but takes a minute.
There are five ways to qualify for tonight’s main event’s 20-driver field:
1. Win a “points event” in 2019 or 2020.
I think this means a race, and I think this is how Haley got in—won at Daytona last summer.
2. Win a NASCAR All-Star Race at any point in history.
Makes sense.
3. Win a NASCAR Cup Series Championship and compete full time.
Again, adds up.
4. Win one of the three stages of the Open, the race that precedes the All-Star Race main event.
Kind of fun. Anyone can make it.
5. Win the fan vote as an Open racer.
The assumption is this is going to Bubba Wallace. Hell yeah.
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This leaves us with 16 drivers in the field (Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman, Ryan Blaney, Haley, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Cole Custer, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman, Joey Logano, Chase Elliott, Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, and Erik Jones) and four spots to be filled. The 16 drivers who’ve already qualified will have fancy lights under their cars, which will either look amazing or be wildly disappointing because I’m expecting them to look amazing. Additionally, all the cars will have some different paint schemes, which I haven’t looked at yet.
Should be fun. It’s at Bristol so it has to be fun. It’s an exhibition so we would hope it would be fun. Winning doesn’t qualify the winner for the playoffs and no points are to be had.
