The NASCAR Clash Is the Best Race I’ve Ever Attended
About a month ago, I did what I’ve done every winter for 14 years: opened my phone calendar to count the weeks until the new NASCAR season. I stopped on Feb. 5—the date of NASCAR’s Clash at the Coliseum, a new, experimental race at a football stadium in the middle of Los Angeles—and googled flights to LA. I did it because I don’t know how long the LA Clash will exist, and there’s an allure to witnessing history.
But what I saw wasn’t just history. It was the best car race I’ve ever attended.
NASCAR kicks off every race season with the Clash, a preseason exhibition race where Cup Series drivers compete for bragging rights instead of championship points. The Clash historically took place at Daytona International Speedway before the Daytona 500, but the race got stale over the years due to a small, invite-only field and regular crashes. In 2020, only six cars finished. One was a lap down, and most were badly damaged.
For the 2022 Clash, NASCAR threw out everything but the name. The sanctioning body moved the race from the high banks of Daytona to a flat, quarter-mile oval at the Coliseum, a historic Olympic venue and the current home of the University of Southern California’s football team. The race was no longer an invitational, and all drivers had to run heat races to qualify for the 37.5-mile feature (not a typo!) with a scheduled halftime concert break. It wasn’t a typical NASCAR race, and reception was mixed.
I thought the LA Clash was incredible when I watched it on TV last year, but that was nothing compared to going in person. What I saw rewired how I think about motorsports.
We need more races in city centers
The LA Clash is a revolution, and it starts before you get to the track. Because the Coliseum is a few miles from downtown LA, it’s surrounded by stops on the LA Metro—a transit rail that costs $1.75 per trip or $3.50 per day. The Metro took me right to the Coliseum, eliminating the hours-long LA traffic jams I’ve grown accustomed to. I just hopped on the train, played Minesweeper for 45 minutes, then I was at my destination.
Most NASCAR facilities are gargantuan structures surrounded by inefficient transportation options. The roads to the track are littered with signs advertising the price to park, and often, traffic moves so slowly that the people walking from their $20 lot 2 miles away end up getting to the gates faster than the vehicles. The tracks are the destination because there’s nothing around them, and there’s only so much you can do once you get there.
But the Coliseum is different. Within five minutes of hopping off the Metro, I was at the doors of the California Science Center—a huge, free-of-charge museum with exhibits on space, ecosystems, life cycles, and more. I saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour in person, then walked across the street to enter the track. Other fans did the same, in addition to visiting different museums and touring the campus.
We were in LA for two days, which is barely enough time to watch the racing on a normal NASCAR weekend. But at the Clash, we got to see a race and experience a new part of the country.
NASCAR is entertainment—and the LA Clash treats it as such
To seasoned NASCAR fans, the LA Clash sounds gimmicky, expensive, and risky. Not only does NASCAR spend more than a month paving over the football field and installing safety equipment just to dig it all back up, but it also has to hope for an entertaining and logistically smooth race on a temporary circuit half the size of the shortest track on the Cup calendar. This year, NASCAR added mufflers to the race cars and Wiz Khalifa as the halftime show.
The mufflers were evident all weekend. In single-car qualifying runs at the track, you could hear the tires squeal with each wrong input or missed braking point. On the broadcast, I’ve been told you could hear the gears during shifts.
It made the experience that much more visceral. We could hear—not just see—exactly what the drivers were doing and when they messed up, because the stadium wasn’t reverberating a sharp, constant drone the whole time.
The sound was also manageable when the multi-car heat and feature races began. We used earplugs simply because we brought them, but I could easily carry a conversation at a mild yell during green flags and a normal tone under caution.
I originally bought normal tickets to the Clash, and I chose seats opposite to the Coliseum’s famous Peristyle steps, where NASCAR holds driver introductions and concerts. A friend then signed us up for VIP passes a few days before the race, which got us access to those steps alongside people like 2022 Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams.
But the steps weren’t just for VIPs—they were also the Clash’s student section. Not only did I meet students from all across the country, but I got to watch them see their favorite NASCAR drivers and celebrities up close. A student in a Denny Hamlin sweatshirt told me how badly they wanted a high-five from him, and a few minutes later, Hamlin passed them a bottle of unopened Coke. They were thrilled.
“I’m never drinking this,” they said. “I’m keeping it forever.”
Meanwhile, droves of people—including my husband—watched Khalifa from an arm’s length and got selfies with Williams, who was standing in the crowd with us. It was a lifelong memory for the price of student admission.
The race itself was also enjoyable. A thin racing line led to drivers bumping each other out of the way, and when they did get bumped, they had to work back up through the field. Kyle Busch did that masterfully and almost caught Martin Truex Jr., who ultimately won the race.
There were a lot of cautions in the last half of the race, and I saw so many complaints online about the race, television coverage, and the yellows. But in person, the cautions didn’t detract from the event—much like timeouts during other sports, the stadium DJ used them to blast music. Everyone in the stands danced and cheered under each caution, including me.
The Clash is a blueprint for the future
NASCAR didn’t sell out the 80,000-seat Coliseum in the inaugural year of the LA Clash, and there were thousands of open seats this year as well. If I’d watched the race on television, I’d write that off as: “It’s LA. What do they expect?”
Now that I’ve been, I can’t believe it wasn’t sold out.
I’ve never had more fun at a NASCAR race—or any car race, including Formula One—than I did this year at the Clash, and I would’ve felt that way even without the VIP passes. The race was so well thought out, accessible, and executed, and it catered to new and old NASCAR fans alike.
I think there’s a lot of value in going to huge, ear-shattering NASCAR races at permanent facilities, where the destination is the track and you can’t talk to your friends during green-flag runs. But there’s also an argument for having several spots on the calendar for temporary circuits in city centers, where spectators can take the train right up to the stadium and visit local entertainment before walking in.
I don’t know how long the LA Clash will exist. It could get a permanent spot on the NASCAR schedule, or it could die off forever. But after this year’s race, I’m putting the Clash on my calendar for as long as I can. If it’s financially feasible, I think others should too.
The Clash isn’t just historic. It’s a race that’ll change how you think about racing—and that, to me, is worthwhile.
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