“If this didn’t work, it was going to be ugly.” This is what NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, who conceded his Clash title to Joey Logano, said after the Clash at the Coliseum. The exhibition race not only welcomed the new Next Gen car and the new season but a new set of fans in the sport.

There’s no doubt that the Clash was a success.

All the way from crowd attendance, off-the-track entertainment, to actual racing, the Coliseum witnessed the first-of-its-kind event that was well rounded from all ends.

And just as the saying of ‘greater the risk, higher the reward goes’, NASCAR knew the risk it was taking with such a radical decision.

Ben Kennedy, the great-grandson of the man who started the Clash, said after the race, “I think it was a risk. We knew that from the start.”

“This was something new, something different. We challenged ourselves, the team challenged themselves, to think about this event differently.”

Joey Logano mentions the importance of the Clash to the sport

Joey Logano, the winner of the inaugural Clash at the Coliseum, explained how the first race at the iconic venue was advertised just as much as the good old Daytona 500.

“The hype around this, you watch football games lately, they’re advertising the Clash as much as they’re advertising Daytona 500,” Logano said.

“That kind of puts it into perspective a little bit on what this event meant to our sport, how big of a gamble this really was, right? This could have gone awful. It went great.”

Looking on at the future of the Clash, it was earlier reported that NASCAR could come back to the Coliseum for two more seasons. So considering the success of this one, it’s not hard to guess what their decision would be.

Especially while keeping in mind what racing in venues such as this could mean to the sport, just as Kyle Busch said, “it lends itself to possible opportunities down the road.”

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