NASCAR: The return of Father’s Day Cup Series action
By Asher Fair
How rare is NASCAR Cup Series racing on Father’s Day? While it hasn’t happened in a few years and has only happened once in the last five, it used to be an annual occurrence.
For the first time in three years and just the second time since 2014, the NASCAR Cup Series is slated to be in action on Father’s Day, a holiday which is celebrated annually on the third Sunday in June in the United States.
Today’s race, the GEICO 500, is set to be contested at Talladega Superspeedway, and it is the 13th race of the 36-race 2020 season, marking the halfway points of the 26-race regular season before the four-round, 10-race playoffs. It is the ninth race on the schedule since the Cup Series returned following a 10-week hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
NASCAR has been active on Father’s Day in recent years, but more specifically, the Cup Series has not been. There hasn’t been a race at the sport’s highest level on this particular Sunday since 2017, when Kyle Larson held off Chase Elliott to win at Michigan International Speedway.
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That race at the four-turn, 2.0-mile (3.219-kilometer) oval one Brooklyn, Michigan was also the first Father’s Day Cup Series race in three years. At that point, there hadn’t been a race on this day since 2014 when Jimmie Johnson held off Kevin Harvick to take the checkered flag.
Despite the recent lack of action at NASCAR’s top level on Father’s Day, however, Cup Series racing on Father’s Day had been an annual thing.
There was a race scheduled on Father’s Day every year from 1971 to 2014, and only once in those 44 years did that race get pushed back, with that being when the 2000 race at Pocono Raceway was postponed by one day due to bad weather before it was won by Jeremy Mayfield.
However, today’s 188-lap race around the four-turn, 2.66-mile (4.281-kilometer) high-banked oval in Lincoln, Alabama is still unique in that it is slated to be the first Father’s Day Cup Series race contested at a track other than Michigan International Speedway in a decade.
The last track other than Michigan International Speedway to host a Father’s Day Cup Series race was Sonoma Raceway, which did so most recently in 2010 when Johnson took the checkered flag ahead of Robby Gordon.
It is worth noting that while this year’s schedule has been shaken up due to the coronavirus pandemic, there would have been a Father’s Day race this afternoon even without the threat of COVID-19, and it would not have been contested at Michigan International Speedway regardless.
So this particular rare trend did not depend on a schedule overhaul, despite the fact that today’s race was originally scheduled to have taken place on Sunday, April 26.
Chicagoland Speedway was originally scheduled to host a race this afternoon. But the pandemic caused three tracks to lose races, and the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval in Joliet, Illinois ended up being one of two tracks to be completed scrapped from the calendar, the other being Sonoma Raceway, which was originally scheduled to host a race last Sunday, June 14.
Richmond Raceway also lost a race date, but it still has a playoff race scheduled to take place on Saturday, September 12.
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Be sure to tune in to Fox at 3:00 p.m. ET this afternoon for the live broadcast of the GEICO 500 from Talladega Superspeedway, and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.