Why annual playoff races at Homestead-Miami Speedway are so important to NASCAR’s future

Everybody wants a piece of South Florida these days. Formula One brought a race to Miami-Dade County for the first time in May, the Super Bowl was just in Miami Gardens in 2020 and the College Football National Championship was there in 2021, and the World Cup will come to Hard Rock Stadium in 2026, too.

NASCAR was ahead of the curve. In 2002, the sport brought its biggest races of the year to Homestead, crowning its champion at Homestead-Miami Speedway for more than 15 years, until, in 2020, it stopped.

After a two-year hiatus, the NASCAR playoffs — albeit not the championship — are back in Dade County. Homestead-Miami once again has a major race to sell to local, casual fans and NASCAR has one of the world’s hottest markets to help spotlight one of its biggest weekends of the year.

“For our sport,” Aric Almirola said, “it’s so important to be down here.”

Almirola, who will drive the No. 10 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing in the 2022 Dixie Vodka 400 on Sunday at 2:30 p.m., admits there might be some bias a Cuban American from Florida, but those pieces of his heritage also make him particularly adept to think about where his sport’s future lies.

Homestead-Miami president Al Garcia points to an oft-quoted study from several years ago, which, as he put it, found “the average NASCAR fan was a 55-year-old white man.”

There are, of course, plenty of those in Miami-Dade, but it’s also the most populous mostly Hispanic county in the country, with the largest populations of Cuban Americans, Colombian Americans and Nicaraguan Americans, as well as Hatian Americans, in the United States.

It’s also a population destination for European tourists and immigrants — hence Formula One’s success earlier this year at the Miami International Autodrome — and it fits right in with NASCAR’s desire to find a more diverse, sustainable audience.

“Miami’s one of the hottest markets in the world,” Garcia said. “It’s a melting plot, so to support NASCAR’s efforts in diversity and inclusion there’s no better place than Miami.”

“We talk about California, Arizona and Texas, but that’s predominantly one country: There’s a lot of Mexican people and people of color, but here it’s a melting pot — truly a melting pot.”

Even if there are bigger venues with more history and a more dedicated local fan base, South Florida sells itself as a destination for out-of-town fans, and NASCAR gets to use a high-profile race as a way to draw in a different demographic of new fans.

The success of the inaugural Miami Grand Prix should be a lesson, too, and prove an auto race can succeed at the highest level in this county, and Homestead-Miami Speedway (HMS) tries to sell the casual fan in a similar manner.

At one turn, there’s a real spring-fed lake with a beach and water sports on the infield. At another, there’s a two-story bar built out of spray-painted shipping containers, like something out of Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood.

HMS knows the actual racing is secondary to some Miamians.

“Homestead has done a great job of marketing to their fan base and to the communities around there,” Almirola said.

The racing usually isn’t bad, either. The track is a fan and driver favorite because of the close finishes, and comebacks, it creates. On Sunday, seven drivers will be vying to clinch a spot in the Championship 4 — Joey Logano has already clinched, but Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney and Christopher Bell are all still looking for a spot — and Garcia expects will make for some particularly aggressive driving.

Even though he didn’t qualify for the Round of 8, Almirola still looks forward to this weekend every year because of track. He can’t wait to get out there for practice and qualifying Saturday.

Until then, he’s on the lookout for the best Cuban restaurants in Miami and hopefully a quick trip to the Little Havana neighborhood.

He can’t do anything like that anywhere else on the NASCAR calendar.

“To bring motor racing to this part of the country is very fitting and to do it here in Homestead-Miami, and race at, like I said, one of my favorite mile-and-a-half race tracks ... is very fitting,” Almirola said, “and I’m so glad that we come down to this community and put on world-class racing with NASCAR.”