The finale of the 2022 NASCAR Cup Collection season wound up being a virtually good summation of the imperfect marketing campaign that it had simply wrapped up. A most apropos interval stamped on the finish of a narrative that had been written for the reason that first inexperienced flag was waved over NASCAR’s 74th season, 274 days earlier within the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

There was loads of drama at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday. There was controversy. There was good racing. At one level, the Championship 4 have been: 1. Main. 2. Operating third. 3. Operating within the high 10 regardless of believing that his engine was blowing up. 4. Combating to get again onto the lead lap after a run-in with the automotive that was now working third.

However ultimately, not even all of that would fairly get out from beneath the cloud of a narrative that nobody noticed coming. The most recent stanza in a damaged file of a theme that has dogged the latter levels of what had been one NASCAR’s most outstanding seasons. Dangerous information performing like an annoying lapped automotive that refused to get out of the way in which.

“I feel that this has been one of many craziest years in NASCAR historical past. It needs to be, proper? It definitely has been from my perspective,” stated Joey Logano, shortly after turning into solely the seventeenth multitime champion of NASCAR’s premier collection. “We’re positively going to have fun. However there’s additionally numerous work to do that winter. A variety of introspection. There at all times is, however this winter looks like there’s lots to be accomplished by everybody within the sport.”

Logano drives for Penske Racing, a staff with whom he has now gained 29 races and a pair of Cup Collection titles. However earlier than he signed with Roger Penske in 2012, he spent his first 4 full seasons at inventory automotive racing’s highest stage as a driver for Joe Gibbs Racing. He had been anointed as the subsequent Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart, famously nicknamed “Sliced Bread,” as in “larger than …” However he was additionally thrown into the deep finish at 18 years previous and certainly drowned, labeled by many as a bust after “solely” two wins in the identical automotive that Stewart had used to win 33 races and grow to be a legend.

Amongst his de facto bosses at JGR was Coy Gibbs, son of Joe, the staff’s namesake and a Professional Soccer Corridor of Famer who had simply wrapped up his second stint as head coach of Washington, with Coy, a former all-star linebacker at Stanford, on his employees. As Logano was shifting on in 2013, Coy Gibbs was shifting up the ladder at JGR. He finally ascended to the function of co-chairman, serving to to supervise the staff that had Logano’s former experience, the No. 20 Toyota, now pushed by Christopher Bell, alongside Logano within the Championship 4 at Phoenix on Sunday. On Saturday evening, Coy’s son Ty Gibbs gained the Xfinity Collection title in a JGR machine. Hours later, Coy died in his sleep on the age of 49, the information introduced by the staff simply as prerace ceremonies have been starting.

“What I need to do is say a prayer for Joe Gibbs and the loss he had,” Penske stated as he met with the media within the Phoenix Raceway media middle, whereas Logano and the staff have been nonetheless going by the post-title photograph dance outdoors. “That is extra necessary than a win or a championship.”

It’s troublesome to recall a NASCAR Cup Collection season that started with as a lot pleasure and hope as this one did in February 2022. That historic exhibition race within the L.A. Coliseum generated a wave of constructive vitality that carried the game nicely into summer time. That was adopted by a Daytona 500 that set the tone for what has been, inarguably, essentially the most top-to-bottom aggressive season since NASCAR’s premier collection debuted in 1949, with the stunning victory of Penske’s Austin Cindric, a rookie, successful “The Nice American Race.”

Cindric was the primary of an unimaginable 19 totally different winners over 36 races and the primary of a outstanding 5 first-time winners. That parity even managed to crash the postseason, as half of the ten playoff races have been gained by drivers who had already been eradicated from title competition.

The catalyst for this stage enjoying area was the so-called Subsequent Gen race automotive, a product of years of unprecedented cooperation between NASCAR and its three auto producers. It’s a one-size-fits-all machine, the closest to an precise “inventory automotive” that NASCAR has fielded in additional than 60 years. Subsequent Gen was designed with the hope of reducing prices, narrowing the engineering hole between little groups and superpowers, all whereas producing entertaining door-to-door racing.

2 Associated

It largely achieved all the above, and NASCAR was rewarded with rising TV scores, ticket gross sales and that desired parity. Immediately, second-tier groups reminiscent of Trackhouse Racing have been title contenders. Trackhouse’s Ross Chastain was the racer chasing Logano to the checkered flag at Phoenix, within the postseason by way of his win on the Circuit of the Americas highway course and the Talladega Superspeedway, vastly totally different races gained in the very same automotive.

However as summer time gave solution to fall, the brand new machine additionally started producing considerations about an unexpected value being paid by the drivers behind the wheel. Veterans reminiscent of Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin had voiced security considerations all year long, and Harvick’s scramble from his automotive because it burst into flames through the Southern 500 at Darlington turned a visible flashpoint for the talk. Then a pair of would-be title contenders in Alex Bowman and Kurt Busch had their efforts minimize brief by concussions, with Busch finally stepping away from full-time racing. Racers stated that the body of the automotive is just too stiff to correctly shield them throughout rear impacts. Then they stated they have been pissed off by NASCAR’s refusal to heed their warnings through the season’s scorching begin.

Within the midst of that very public security debate, Bubba Wallace obtained a one-race suspension for a rage-fueled crash of Kyle Larson at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the primary Cup Collection driver parked by NASCAR for an in-race incident in seven years. Not for the battle that got here after the accident, however relatively for committing the last word racing sin: purposely hooking a competitor’s automotive in the best rear whereas racing at velocity and in visitors.

Within the two races that adopted, the main target returned to the racing itself and the thrill concerning the buildup to the Phoenix showdown of Logano, Chase Elliott, Bell and Chastain, who singlehandedly turned the dialog to on-track motion when he used a wall-riding online game transfer at Martinsville Speedway to make the Championship 4 within the last flip of the 12 months’s penultimate race. Even when that became a “Ought to drivers try this?” argument, at the very least it was a racing-based debate.

For 312 laps, Phoenix offered flashbacks of each chapter of the 2022 NASCAR story. There was the information about Gibbs that deflated each coronary heart within the paddock. The Subsequent Gen machine offered good racing as soon as once more, nevertheless it additionally as soon as once more despatched a racer — Logano’s former teammate Brad Keselowski — scrambling out of a hearth after a seemingly run-of-the-mill wreck. When Bowman, in his first race again after 5 weeks on the sidelines, hit the wall to convey out the race’s last warning, one could not assist however pause and fear if he had reaggravated his concussion-like signs.

In the end, night arrived with a closing-laps showdown between Logano and Chastain, a future Corridor of Famer driving for a superpower staff versus an upstart underdog employed by what was alleged to be a second-tier staff however has benefited all season from that very same new mannequin of automotive and the parity that got here with it. Logano gained, cementing his place among the many sport’s all-time greats. Now NASCAR hopes that the season as an entire does the identical, remembered in the long term extra for the superb competitors it produced as an alternative of the dangerous information that appeared to at all times be lurking within the rearview mirror all through fall.

In response to the complaints about communication, NASCAR has held conferences with the drivers as a bunch all through the autumn. The engineers at NASCAR’s Analysis & Improvement Heart spent October conducting crash exams on a brand new rear bumper and rear clip design for Subsequent Gen that might be carried out subsequent season. Throughout his annual “State of the Sport” information convention at Phoenix, NASCAR president Steve Phelps pledged to maintain these conferences going and hold the work shifting ahead.

“I feel the communication between the sanctioning physique and the drivers over this previous 5 – 6 weeks has utterly shifted the narrative on how the drivers are feeling concerning the space of security or ‘race potential,’ no matter it’s the considerations are,” Phelps stated. “The conversations we’re having with the drivers, you’ll be able to inform there is a distinction in how the drivers are talking even to all of you [in the media].”

Can the early-season vitality of 2022 be recreated? Can the unpredictability of the 2022 racing outcomes be repeated? Can NASCAR race its means out from the underneath the specter of dangerous information all the way in which till a season’s finish?

The Daytona 500 might be right here earlier than later. The 2022 title bout is over. Now NASCAR can start its battle with fixing this automotive over the offseason.

However first, possibly only a transient pause to catch one’s breath.

“I do not actually care about 2023 proper now,” Elliott stated following the accident with Chastain that knocked him out of the championship race, and unknowingly talking for the complete storage. “We had 5 wins on the season, and we had — you inform me what the stats are. That is how you’d assess it, proper? I do know we gained 5 races. That is greater than we did final 12 months.

“However don’t inform me what the countdown clock [to Daytona] is as a result of I do not need to know.”