The IMSA season was a roar from start to finish and season-ending Petit Le Mans was wild from green to checkered flag.
CONCORD, NC – Another year of racing has come and gone.
This column concludes my 35th year as a motorsport writer and my 42nd as a journalist. A lot of you have spent writing for these sites and it’s been a wild, wild ride.
Since I started in 1988, the sport has changed fundamentally, some good and some not. It’s still the best show out there, don’t get me wrong. It’s just different. One of the big things I saw this year was a significant increase in competition. Sure, there are some series where a single team or driver is dominant and it’s been that way since the sport began.
In NASCAR, there hasn’t been a Petty, Waltrip, Earnhardt, Gordon or Johnson who has won a significant portion of Cup Series races.
It’s good. competition is important.
The drama at NASCAR that year revolved around the next-gen car in the Cup Series and the teething troubles it suffered. I’m not sure if removing teams from building their own cars is a permanent idea, but we’ll see how it goes in year two. Safety is paramount, and NASCAR is taking steps to make the new gear safer for drivers. That should be the first, last, and only thing going forward until it’s fixed.
The continued rise of indy car racing is a welcome reminder that the sport has finally emerged from the chaos of the mid-1990s while boasting great shows in a variety of venues. I’ve never been the biggest fan of road racing, but the new round at Nashville adds to the spectacle that the Long Beach Grand Prix has always presented, and the St. Petersburg GP is a standout event to open the season.
The Indianapolis 500 has been back for a number of years and is showing signs of becoming “the race” it once was. That’s huge and a welcome sight for this devotee of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing. Kudos to Roger Penske for making it possible.
One of the things I enjoyed the most this season was the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. This whole series was a smash hit from start to finish and the season-ending Petit Le Mans was wild from green flag to checkered flag. It was 10 hours of chaos filled with insane action and well worth the time you watched.
Imagine a 10-hour endurance race with all the hallmarks of Saturday’s finals at the Knoxville Nationals, a green-and-white checkered finish at the Daytona 500, and the final segment of NASCAR Championship 4 in Phoenix.
It was a captivating afternoon and evening in front of the TV.
One of the better regional series in the South, the CARS Racing Tour, hosted several shows that were well worth the money to see. Chief among them was the Racetrack Revival 200 at North Wilkesboro (NC) Speedway.
The venerable track made a splash with its return, attracting over 20,000 fans to the facility for a 125-lap CARS Tour Late Model Stock Car event. It helped that Dale Earnhardt Jr. started the time machine for a return to 1997 when he rode a Sun Drop-sponsored late model from his own stable to third place at the finish.
His appearance at – and support for – the return to North Wilkesboro was enthusiastically received by fans hungry for such a spectacle, and the event’s success led to bigger and better things for one of NASCAR’s original tracks.
I bet Enoch and Gwyn Staley and the family would have been proud of what happened that night.
In terms of successful seasons for motorsport since I’ve been there, 2022 stands out for the following reasons: It was fast, it was convincing and the racing across the map was just out of this world. It’s the best there is here at Wide Open World HQ.
Enjoy the holidays and I look forward to another banner year in 2023.
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