LOS ANGELES – No more speculation. No more questions. No more what ifs.
After five months of buildup and hype, the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum will become a reality this weekend.
On Sunday, the speculation, questions and what ifs will either be answered or dispelled during the first NASCAR Cup event of the year.
That doesn’t just apply to the temporary quarter-mile track that NASCAR has constructed in the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It also goes for the Next Gen car, which will make its much-anticipated competitive debut in the exhibition race.
With all the questions around the event and the car, Corey LaJoie strongly believes Sunday’s exhibition race represents his best chance yet to win a Cup event, or at least be competitive.
“I love the fact that NASCAR opened (The Clash) up for the teams that wouldn’t (be) qualified for the Clash in its old format,” LaJoie, driver of Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 Chevrolet, said Wednesday. “It opens it up to everyone available to qualify for the race, especially for the first one that is such a monumental event that’s going to be this weekend, but my expectations are as high as they have ever been in the Cup Series.”
LaJoie is someone who for most of his Cup career (164 starts since 2014) has driven backmarker cars that weren’t “faster than a 25th-place car.” He’s never placed in the top 10 outside Daytona and Talladega.
The son of two-time Busch Series champion Randy LaJoie, the 30-year-old driver argues that Sunday is the “most even (opportunity) going into an event in the history of NASCAR.”
“With the limited amount of notes, the quarter-mile temporary race track that nobody has any notes on it and everybody is guessing at their simulation,” LaJoie said. “It kind of goes back to old school racing where you try to set the car up based on what you know and align left and get the elbow up and get after it.”
If anyone should have confidence Sunday, regardless of equipment, it could be LaJoie.
The track constructed in the Coliseum is inspired by Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C. LaJoie is the only active Cup driver who can claim to have won a modern NASCAR race at the facility that last hosted a Cup race in 1971.
While Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Daniel Suarez and others also competed in ARCA Menards Series East races at Bowman Gray, LaJoie won the 2012 event there, leading 118 of 153 laps.
“I definitely obviously favor short tracks,” LaJoie said. “(Bowman Gray) is a quarter mile, more round than the L.A. Coliseum (track), so I feel like on paper I’ve got as much stock car experience running quarter-mile small tracks than anybody in the field, as well as our team building solid racecars to have good speed at the last couple Next Gen tests.”
What will LaJoie’s racing morals be when it comes to trying win an exhibition race that’s only rewards are money and glory?
“There’s lots of things you have to consider,” LaJoie said. “We are all race car drivers and that goes out the window with any common sense when you put the visor down. … I do think that anything is going to be worth it to be the first guy to win in the Next Gen car as well as the first guy to win, potentially the only guy to win, in the L.A. Coliseum. I think there’s going to be a lot of guys going to some great lengths, myself included, to get myself into the show as well as hopefully put ourselves in position to win the show.”
Team Penske’s Joey Logano claims his morals for getting the historic win are based in being “consistent,” whether it’s Daytona or Los Angeles.
His goal in winning is to “do what it takes to do that, but you have to have your moral code and what is considered OK.“
“Is straight-up dumping somebody OK to go win a race? I don’t think so,” Logano said. “That’s not really in my cards. Now, a bump-and-run, I’ve proven that’s OK. The facts are you have to be OK with it happening to you. Am I OK with getting wrecked? No. Am I OK with getting moved out of the way? I’m not gonna be happy about it, but you have to be OK with it if I’m gonna do it.”
Hendrick Motorsports’ William Byron noted that the short 150-lap race means there’s not a lot of opportunity for “give and take.”
“I think it is going to be a lot more take for most of these guys, but I mean overall I think it is good to pick and choose your battles and what you think is important,” Byron said. “If you have the pace in the car and the speed to pass guys, then it is going to be a lot easier than trying to defend. I mean if you are defending you are kind of at the mercy of the guy behind you, but hopefully we are fast enough we can be the one making the moves and be the one making the passes.”