It wasn’t a normal day for anyone at the racetrack on Sunday, but The Real Heroes 400 ended with a familiar result:
Kevin Harvick in Victory Lane.
Harvick is now a 50-time winner in the NASCAR Cup Series. He ended the tie he had with his team’s co-owner Tony Stewart for 14th on the all-time Cup wins list and is now tied for 12th with Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett.
About 900 people were on the ground at Darlington Raceway, and each one of them practiced social distancing and wore a mask. Everyone had their body temperature taken before entering the infield, and no fans were present in the grandstands.
The fact that live competition was returning brought a sense of normalcy to sports fans. NASCAR was put into the spotlight on Sunday because it was the first major sport in the U.S. to resume its events. Right now, the MLB, NBA, and NHL — among other leagues — are still suspended, so fans that have desperately craved live competition on television were inclined to tune into the race on Fox.
“I didn’t think it was gonna be that much different, and then we won the race, and it’s dead silent out here,” Harvick said. “We miss the fans …”
#NASCARIsBack was the No. 1 Trending Twitter topic during the time of the race. Names like Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, and Alex Bowman were trending, too.
Johnson, however, had an unfortunate accident right before the end of Stage 1. Chris Buescher was slightly off-pace coming out of Turn 2 with Johnson, who was the leader at the time, unable to navigate cleanly around the slower car. He spun into the inside wall on the backstretch.
His day ended early, and he finished 38th.
Bowman finished second. Had he passed Harvick on the inside after a restart with about 34 laps to go, he might have been the one doing donuts in front of an empty grandstand.
“It was kind of eerie to walk out to pit road and not see anybody sitting in the grandstands, but it sure felt good to get back in the race car, and that thrill of competition was much needed,” 12th-place finisher Aric Almirola said. “I hope everybody enjoyed it, and I hope everybody got a little fill of their sports entertainment through watching us today in the race and hope everybody is doing well. We’re one step closer back to normal.”
Added ninth-place finisher John Hunter Nemechek: It’s definitely different without (fans) there and I can’t wait until the day that you guys are back. … I’m looking forward to the future.”
So, keep your appetite whet, NASCAR fans.
Sunday’s The Real Heroes 400 was just the first of 19 national series races in a 36-day span. On Tuesday night, the Xfinity Series will race a 200-mile event. On Wednesday, there will be another 310-mile Cup race. Next Sunday is the crown jewel Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
The point is, NASCAR is back, and it is in full force to catch up with all the races that had to be postponed. Fans have been famined for two months, but they’ll be feasting for more than a month now with an abundance of racing from the Cup, Xfinity, and Truck series.
Busch will run all seven races that transpire at Darlington and Charlotte over 11 days in the second half of this month. Timmy Hill, the unofficial iRacing Pro Invitational Series champion, will do the same. It will be a physically and mentally taxing week and a half for those drivers who hadn’t been in real racecars since March 8 at Phoenix Raceway.
“I’m running all of those [races], every one that’s scheduled I’m in,” Busch said in an interview on SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio earlier this week. “It’s going to be getting thrown to the wolves, that’s for sure.”
For Wednesday’s Cup race, the top-20 finishers from Sunday will be inverted for the starting lineup. Ryan Preece and Ty Dillon (finished 20th and 19th, respectively) will lead the grid to green, and Harvick will go for the Darlington sweep from Row 10.
