Remember when the All-Star Race was known as “The Winston”? It was a home track shootout under the lights on a Saturday night. It allowed teams to stay local and didn’t insist on being a full race. Pyro, fancy intros and one off paint schemes: The All Star Race was NASCARs mid season spectacle for the die-hards and the fans on the fence. 

Now? The All Star Race is just checking boxes, and this year was easily the worst case. Set in a confusing and chaotic format at 10 AM in Dover, a track that was moved to the this event and taken off as a points race, fans and drivers alike were left confused at what the idea was.

Well, the idea was that NASCAR knew it couldn’t leave a track with so much history and respect like Dover off the schedule, it also knew that it needed to check some box off for an “All Star Race”. What we got was clearly something that the brass didn’t think nor care about. 

Lets begin with the biggest affront to me personally. 10 AM on a Sunday. I can’t believe I was up and enjoying my caffeine right as the pre race was going on, that’s not even most points races, and shouldn’t ever be the All Star. The first ever All Star race was accompanied by the first ever usage of lights around a race track. That piece of history is forever intertwined into the event, and it should be a staple of its allure. 

Onto what most people had issue with and that’s the format. What a confusing and stupid joke that this format was from top to bottom. All drivers competed in a 75 lap segment, then the top 26 drivers were inverted in the second segment, then the 200 lap (!!) actual all star race was the final segment with 26 participants where a few drivers not locked in got in based on the first two segments. 

Confusing right? I get what NASCAR was thinking, allow the fans at Dover to still get as close to a traditional points race as possible, but what happened was a far worse price to pay. 

Many of the great drivers in the field who had already been locked into the one million dollar shootout wrecked at some point in the first two segments, and couldn’t even compete in the All Star or did so with compromised cars. Why am I watching an “All Star Race” where Kyle Larson is in the garage and the Dillon Brothers are duking it out for 8th? 

The open in the old format was exactly the fix for this, it allowed a shootout for the guys who usually don’t get the all star treatment to get some TV time, and the winner of that would get the prestigious right to run with the winners in the field. It felt special. It didn’t yesterday. 

The entire event’s existence this year didn’t do FOX any favors, but they once again put forward a completely lackluster and boring attempt at covering this event. We got the esteemed duo of Jamie Little and Michael Waltrip doing driver intros, and they found a way to mess it up a few times (Denny Hamilton, anyone?) and it overall just had none of the allure it needed to. 

Finally, the events setting. Dover and its fans have no right to be shackled to a gimmick like this. In a year where NASCAR claims to be “moving back to their roots”, they’re leaving one of the schedules most respected tracks off of the points paying race lineup. As I mentioned before, it’s painfully evident they were trying to please both sides of the venn diagram and ended up pissing off everyone. 

Dover is a wide, fast track that while forces driver control to be the forefront, isn’t exactly what I believe encapsulates NASCAR. This event should be at one of two places; Charlotte or Bowman Gray. I think allowing teams to use this weekend as a home field event is important, as it should be a celebration of the sport as a whole. 

Charlotte has the obvious benefit of its history, along with the next gen producing unbelievable racing there. Bowman Gray benefits from similar advantages, with its difference being the fact drivers are competing in a bullring for 1 million dollars. 

Besides, the racing yesterday was good! It showed us that Dover had multiple lanes to work with and that keeping this as a points paying destination is the only choice the sport should be making when it comes to the track. No reason to visit Phoenix twice when we have to exclude this venue. 

As noted by Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, NASCAR could move the Hall of Fame induction to that weekend to make it a true celebration of the sport, which I wholeheartedly agree with. 

Overall, it was depressing to see what’s become of an event that not only should celebrate this sport’s best talents, but also its fans and its existence. Instead, it felt like a hodgepodge done by leaders who have no interest in doing what makes sense. It felt that they, begrudgingly, remembered halfway through the schedule that they needed to not only create an All Star race, but also give Dover its much deserved flowers. 

Instead, we got a garden full of plastic bouquets with the price tag still on them. And that’s not what Dover or any of the talented drivers in this field deserve. 

Ryan Preece’s early wreck in the first segment perfectly encapsulated what we got yesterday: a firestorm. 

Hopefully we are never exposed to the horrors of Miles turned into Frankenstein ever again.