This week on Chronversations, the Chronicle’s student NASCAR analyst, Benjamin Sherman, breaks down this year’s race from track drama to driver surprises, and even the difference between NASCAR and Formula One. Whether you’re a longtime fan or just a newbie to racing, this recap has you covered.
TRANSCRIPT
0:07: Welcome back to Chronicle Conversations.
0:10: I’m your host, Stella Huang.
0:15: NASCAR 2025 just wrapped up last weekend.
0:18: To help us break it all down, I’m here with our student NASCAR analyst, Benjamin.
0:23: Hi, Benjamin, can you briefly introduce yourself?
0:25: Hi, I’m Benjamin Sherman.
0:27: I’m the Columbia Chronicle NASCAR analyst.
0:30: How did NASCAR go this year compared to previous years?
0:33: Well, I’m glad you asked.
0:35: This is actually the first year we completed a Cup Series race and every other year it rained. Although it did also rain this year, the rain managed to hold off just until the last lap of the Cup Series race on Sunday, and I’m very, very glad we got a full race.
0:50: It was so amazing to watch, although we did complete the Xfinity Series last year, when SVG won.
0:56: Yeah, it was a really, really good race.
1:00: We finally finished the race. The contracts are currently in negotiation, so we don’t know if NASCAR Chicago will come back but I was really gonna be upset if we never got a complete NASCAR Cup Series race here, and we finally got one.
1:13: And yeah, it was just so, so amazing.
1:15: Yeah, I was at the viewing party on campus last Sunday.
1:19: It was a good race.
1:20: I definitely enjoyed it.
1:21: Were there any standout drivers or performances that really impressed you?
1:25: Yeah, there are definitely a couple that caught me off guard.
1:28: The 19 of Briscoe for sure, really, really up there.
1:32: Alex Bowman, you know, I guess he did win last year, so I was expecting him to be like, like top 5, but he really was kind of struggling in qualifying.
1:42: And he had a couple small incidents in the race, and then later in the race, he actually took out Bubba Wallace basically entirely, which I don’t know, it does make you wonder like, should there be penalties and things like that, but this is NASCAR rubbing his racing and it’s all right, but he really did.
1:57: I mean, Bubba was already pretty mean to him on the exits of turn 12 and then coming into turn one, they were just right next to each other and yeah. Coming onto Lake Shore Drive, he just completely pit maneuvered him.
2:09: And took him out entirely and wrecked his car.
2:12: So I thought that was a little mean.
2:14: Yeah, also, Connor Zilisch in the Xfinity Series race really had me off guard.
2:19: He was very, very close to SVG, Van Gisbergen, who won both the Xfinity and the Cup Series race. He was very, very close to passing him many times throughout the race in his post-race interview.
2:29: He had some very interesting things to say about his teammates and, yeah, he just made it sound like he was really struggling. But on track it really he looked very, very confident in the car and I almost thought we were gonna have him win and which would be a big shock to have SVG lose, but yeah, big surprise from him.
2:45: I’m curious, from a technical standpoint, how challenging is a street race like this for professional drivers?
2:52: It’s incredibly challenging.
2:53: Some drivers love it, like SVG, who’s a previous Australian supercar driver.
2:59: Some drivers don’t like this track, and the first year we saw some drivers not come out of protest, basically, but yeah. It’s very technical, especially in the heat.
3:07: It’s not really like any other track on the grid.
3:10: There are some road courses that are really tight, but nothing is really as tight as this.
3:13: We have so many 90 degree corners.
3:15: The track gets wide and then it comes down to just basically two lanes.
3:19: These cars are basically a single file the whole way.
3:21: It’s a very, very big challenge for them not to be basically crashing into each other.
3:26: And we saw a couple of big collisions this year, but honestly, I think we got away pretty clean.
3:31: I know NASCAR may still be unfamiliar to some people.
3:35: A lot of them are confused about the differences between Formula One and NASCAR.
3:39: Can you explain it a little bit?
3:41: Oh well, I would love to talk about that because I’m a huge Formula One fan.
3:45: I would say some of the largest differences are Formula One and along with IndyCar, the other American series, they’re called open wheelers, which basically means that the wheels are like physically on the outside of the car and the body does not cover the wheels, whereas NASCAR looks much more like a traditional street car.
4:02: Yeah, NASCAR stands for National Association of Stock Car Racing.
4:06: NASCAR actually used to be made up of basically cars that were designed for the streets, and they took them and souped them up.
4:13: It’s not really the case anymore, but it’s just really cool that that’s part of its history that they were basically streetcars and they would soup them up and do as they said, races on Sunday, buying cars on Monday.
4:23: Hm, good to know that.
4:26: what should people pay attention to if they’re catching up to NASCAR and want to follow more races in the future?
4:32: Oh, that’s a good question.
4:34: I would definitely say you want to, just watch out for some of the underdogs.
4:37: I think sometimes we get too caught up in like the top three drivers of a race and it’s like we kind of lose out on a lot of what’s happening in the back of the field and to me some of the closest races are back there.
4:47: Just stay focused on which cars are getting close to each other, which drivers are, maybe not in the front, but they’re taking a lot of places. We saw a couple of people this weekend really moving up, like Bowman moving up the field had had a kind of a shitty qualifying, but they’re able to just pass these cars on tracks like this.
5:01: It’s definitely easier on the ovals on tracks like this, if you’re one of those drivers making passes, I mean that takes some serious skill and some serious confidence in your car and yeah, it doesn’t always go right.
5:11: Some cars just try to make a pass right into the wall.
5:14: Make sure to stay up to date with campus and metro news at columbiachronicle.com.
5:19: And sign up for our newsletter at columbiachronicle.com/newsletter.
5:25: I’m Stella Huang.
5:26: Thanks for listening.
Copy edited by Emma Jolly