3 things to watch before NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1 start

For fans of NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula 1, January is the cruelest month, with a total of zero scheduled races. But there are still plenty of ways to see your favorite drivers in action.

All three major racing series enjoyed exciting 2021 seasons, from Kyle Larson’s dominance in NASCAR, to Alex Palou’s sudden emergence in IndyCar, to Max Verstappen’s improbable last-lap championship win in Formula 1.

But the NASCAR Cup Series championship race at Phoenix Raceway was on Sunday, November 7, IndyCar last ran at Long Beach on Sunday, September 26, and the thrilling Formula 1 season finale in Abu Dhabi was now a month ago.

With the Daytona 500 less than six weeks away (Sunday, February 20), at least the light at the end of the tunnel ahead is closer than the one behind. But there are still a lot of empty Sundays between now and then.

NASCAR is actually scheduled to resume racing on Sunday, February 6 with the could-be-great-could-be-a-disaster Busch Light Clash exhibition race on a temporary quarter-mile track inside Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. While that one won’t count in the standings, it will certainly be worth watching, perhaps more for the novelty value and potential for hilarity than any promise of great racing action.

The green flag is scheduled to drop on the 2022 IndyCar season on February 27 in St. Petersburg, and Formula 1 is scheduled for lights out in Bahrain on Sunday, March 20.

IndyCar fans are waiting to see if Scott Dixon can recapture the title from his much younger teammate and if Romain Grosjean can go from quick learner to championship contender in his second season.

Formula 1 faithful are waiting not only to see if Lewis Hamilton even takes the grid this season in search of a record-breaking eighth world championship, but what the second chapter of a Verstappen vs. Hamilton title fight might look like.

But amid all this anticipation, there are plenty of things to watch between now and the start of major format racing to whet the appetites of racing fans.

Things to watch: No. 1 – IMSA, WRC Formula E all start in January

If you require top-level competitive racing action to tide you over, there are plenty of world-class races on the calendar for January.

The IMSA season is scheduled to kick off with the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona from Friday, January 28 to Sunday, January 30, with the Roar Before the Rolex 24 the weekend prior. The legendary endurance race will feature a record-high 60 entries, including nearly half of the 2022 IndyCar field.

The entire Chip Ganassi Racing stable are set to drive in Daytona, along with former Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen.

Simon Pagenaud, Rinus VeeKay, Jimmie Johnson, Pato O’Ward, and Colton Herta are among the other IndyCar veterans who aim to compete in one of racing’s most challenging events.

At least the drivers in Daytona will have clean, dry pavement beneath them and the Florida sunshine warming them from above.

The World Rally Championship season is scheduled to kick off with the Rallye Monte-Carlo from Thursday, January 20 to Sunday, January 23, when drivers will have to contend with the snow-covered roads and freezing temperatures of the Swiss Alps.

Endurance and rally races can make for difficult television viewing, however. Until racing fans can organize themselves into teams to split viewing duties like race teams do with the driving, those remain events best consumed by picking through online updates periodically and tuning in for highlights and the finish.

For racing fans looking for a more traditional weekend racing experience, Formula E has you covered. The 2022 driver lineup features three former Formula 1 drivers – Stoffel Vandoorne, Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Giovinazzi – as well as Oliver Askew, who drove for Arrow McLaren SP in IndyCar in 2020.

You can also get a look at Formula 1 hopeful Nyck de Vries during the doubleheader in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia on Friday, January 28 and Saturday, January 29. But if you can’t bring yourself to watch electric cars, there is still some internal combustion happening inches in front of top-notch drivers this coming weekend.

Things to watch: No. 2 – Back to their roots in the Chili Bowl

The annual Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals midget racing championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma have been popular with NASCAR drivers in recent years.

In fact, reigning Cup Series champion Kyle Larson won the Chili Bowl in 2020 and 2021, and two-year Cup Series veteran Christopher Bell won it in each of the three years before Larson’s run.

Larson and Bell are both set to return in 2022, and they will be joined by seven other Cup Series regulars, including 2020 champion Chase Elliott. Eight-year IndyCar veteran Conor Daly is also set to compete.

They’ll be competing alongside 66-year-old midget racing legend Sammy Swindel, who has made appearances in NASCAR and Champ Car races, and two-time Chili Bowl winner Rico Abreu, along with nearly 400 others.

Swindell and the Chili Bowl may have the most interesting single-event legacy in all of auto racing; he won the event five times over a 21-year span from 1989 to 2009. Former winners also include NASCAR’s Tony Stewart and Dave Blaney as well as Indy Racing League veteran Billy Boat.

The Chili Bowl has traditionally drawn top drivers just for the fun factor. It’s also a magnificent fan experience, so if you’re anywhere near Tulsa, this is one event not to miss. It’s the best of the best of local racing, condensed and distilled into a week of dirty fun.

Preliminary rounds are being held this week, and a champion will be crowned on Saturday, January 15.

Things to watch: No. 3 – Recorded races, e-racing can help fill the gaps

If you’re like me, you have a DVR full of races from last season and maybe beyond. Kyle Larson’s celebration and interview after winning the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series championship got an instant “never delete” tag, and half the IndyCar races from last year are worthy of a rewatch.

And of course, Formula 1 gave us plenty of revisitable moments last year, even before the season-ending thriller in Abu Dhabi. Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen collided three times before the finale, giving fans a chance to go back and play steward in our own minds and award the championship as we see fit.

One of those crashes came in the Italian Grand Prix, a race McLaren fans will want to watch over and over again. There was also a thriller in Russia and a bizarre, lonely grid start for Hamilton in Hungary. And we can’t forget about Hamilton’s spectacular performance in Brazil, where he overcame penalties larger than the size of the grid (24 positions) to win.

I have watched the race in Abu Dhabi five times on replay, and I will probably watch it five times more before the Bahrain opener. It all seems so improbable just a few weeks later, and it sets up a magnificent 2022 season if Hamilton does return.

E-racing may not satisfy all racing fans, but the driver lineup alone is enough to pique interest in the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual this year. While NASCAR champion Larson is racing sideways on the dirt in Tulsa, his Formula 1 and IndyCar counterparts Max Verstappen and Alex Palou will be navigating an electronic version of the legendary Le Mans course.

Verstappen will team with IndyCar veteran Felix Rosenqvist, and father and son duo Juan Pablo and Sebastian Montoya will also join forces. IndyCar/Xfinity Series driver Sage Karam and Formula E driver Oliver Rowland are also due to take part.

So while we bide our time waiting for the NASCAR, IndyCar, and Formula 1 seasons to begin, there are plenty of places to see top-level drivers working world-class machinery to its limits.