Why NASCAR Going to the LA Memorial Coliseum Is Bananas ... and Brilliant

• There are some questions inside and outside the sport concerning NASCAR’s ability to stage an entertaining, competitive, season-opening race with big Cup cars on a tiny, inside-a-stadium track.

• Over the past 70 years, NASCAR has deployed its race cars to some unusual landscapes, including Soldier Field in Chicago.

• In 2022, Cup drivers will race under the shadow of the unique peristyle in the eastern end of the stadium.

Over the past 70 years, NASCAR has deployed its race cars to some unusual landscapes, including Soldier Field in Chicago, a minor league baseball stadium in Asheville, N.C., a combination beach-road course in Daytona Beach, Fla. and even a rodeo site in Tucson, Ariz.

February, however, presents a whole new animal.

A race host of near-biblical proportions and history. A venue that will put the NASCAR name, however oddly, on a list that contains most major sporting endeavors and more than a few iconic moments far beyond the fences and limits of mere sport.

Welcome to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

NASCAR has scheduled the Busch Light Clash, the annual non-points race that begins the Cup season, at the coliseum Feb. 6. On a purpose-built quarter-mile asphalt track that will circle the stadium’s football field, NASCAR’s best will compete in a facility that has hosted, to name a very few of the many big names, Bart Starr, Sandy Koufax, Carl Lewis, Lynn Swann, Billy Graham, John F. Kennedy, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Pope John Paul II.

“It’s one of the oldest continually operating stadiums in the country and no doubt a cultural touchstone,” said David Israel, former president of the coliseum commission. “It’s held more important events than most other places, and now NASCAR, which is kind of mind-blowing. How are they going to pull that off?”

Israel, a former sports writer who has visited most of the major sports facilities in the country, puts the coliseum on a list of sports icons that also includes Notre Dame Stadium, Fenway Park, the old Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field and the old Madison Square Garden in New York.

“Stadiums just don’t look like that anymore,” he said. “The fact that the coliseum has endured in this time of everybody trying to make everything look the same is incredible.”