INDIANAPOLIS — It’s time we have a chat. We need to have an honest, no holes barred, realistic conversation. You may have seen recently that despite being in the midst of a pandemic, NASCAR is giving a hard attempt at making a return next month. That may make sports fans, especially racing fans, giddy. But, lets be realistic — you aren’t going to be able to witness these races in person any time soon, if at all in 2020. Sorry, but I had go there and rip off that band aid quickly. It needed to be done early so we can move forward.

I’m a straight shooter. I don’t want to give a false narrative.

Now that the healing wound is exposed, lets dig deeper.

The COVID-19 has wrecked havoc on this world of ours. The virus that originated in China, has spread literally all around this planet and has spared no one in between. Whether you’ve been in contact with it or not, odds are that you know someone who has. If you have at least been lucky enough to not have been exposed to this, nor have known anyone who has either, there’s no escaping that everyone’s lives have been affected by this virus whether it be your job, your meals, your bills, etc. It’s hit us all in one way or the other.

It all became a reality though in Mid-March. We knew it could get out of hand at any time, but when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus on March 11, the sporting world came to a stop. That’s the point when our fellow Americans knew that this was serious and nothing to ignore.

The NBA would suspend their season indefinitely that night. The NCAA Tournament, the NCAA Conference Tournaments, MLB, Golf, NHL and the MLS followed suit the next day. On Friday of that week, it was Formula One, NASCAR and IndyCar’s turn to officially postpone their schedules moving forward as well.

In the six weeks now since, we’ve yet to witness a live sporting event. But, it appears though that we could be seeing some movement on that front, finally. There’s starting to be plans falling into place to play live games again with NASCAR being the pioneer on that front.

The governments, both on the federal and state levels, are getting antsy. The United States economy has taken a huge hit over the last two months. Also are most citizens’ bank accounts. We’re each sick of being forced to live like this and having to hunker down the way that we have since Mid-March. Most countries weren’t founded, nor built, to pay people not to work. That’s like race cars being made to sit idle in garages. It doesn’t make sense.

So, in order to get back to a somewhat normal life, we have to open things back up in a measurable fashion soon. The problem is, our “old normal” isn’t going to be a “new normal” when we do so. Yes, the models are showing that the curve is going in the right direction and that the spread of the virus is slowing, but that’s because we’ve done a good job of staying home and social distancing.

Credit to each of you for that.

Despite the improved numbers, you just can’t open everything back up to the “old normal” because we’re overly desperate to get the economies sparked up again. That won’t work. That is the wrong way to go about it and overly dangerous. The virus is waiting to wreck havoc on us again and wanting to prey on our innocent souls by moving too fast. We can’t go out like we did on March 10 and act like nothing happened starting on March 11 because that curve will go right back up like it was a few weeks ago.

So, the new “normal” is going to look a lot different than anything we’ve ever witnessed before. Sporting events will happen again, but you can’t realistically think that we can go into venues in droves and think that it won’t spread between us.

Restaurants, movie theaters, retail stores, etc, well they can hold hundreds of people, depending on their size of the venue. Major sporting events, like races in general, well they hold in excess of 50k at most places with an average crowd being well over that. Heck, the Indianapolis 500 is the single most attended spectator event in the world – WORLD. That’s the same world with hundreds of thousands of deaths and over 2 million confirmed cases in 210 different countries. Each May, well August for this year, 300,000+ are in attendance. Half of that have perished because of this disease and by time it’s over, the entire seating capacity around the 2.5-mile track could be filled with bodies of those that didn’t make it. Think about that for a minute.

With a virus going around with no vaccine set to be available any time this calendar year, why would earth do you think 300,000+ people can be in the same spot, sweating, cheering, eating and drinking while rubbing elbows with your closest friends.

That doesn’t sound like it would slow a growth of a deadly virus. That sounds like it would do the opposite. The Indy Star had an interesting piece in their newspaper on Sunday on how a high school basketball tournament saw 5 people pass away from the coronavirus that attended a single venue of that tournament. In a gym that seated a little less than 3k, five people died and several others caught it. They connected dots on how all five were in a gym at Lawrence Central over the course of a few days. In the same year, just a half of a year later in fact, without a way to prevent this from spreading, what happens when 300k show up in the same spot in the same city for a world renowned event? Did the virus just all the sudden go away between March and August? How can it? There’s not a vaccine remember.

That’s just Indy. Most races have fans that attend them from not just their state, but others too. The spread would quickly move back across the country again and racing would be the reason to blame. So, while racing is attempting to start back up again, I don’t realistically see any way that they can race in front of people in the stands for the foreseeable future.

I know they said that they could maybe eventually do so with a seat or two in between people being empty, but how do you honestly do that? Fans may have tickets for those seats. Who moves, who doesn’t? Plus, can you really be sure that those fans don’t touch anything all day? It’s not realistic to think so.

Yes, Governors in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas have now expressed an interest in hosting NASCAR races and reopening their states. But, they also said that those races wouldn’t be attended by fans too.

“Like if NASCAR does a race and can televise it without having large crowds, I think that’s a good thing,” Flordia’s governor Ron DeSantis said in a recent interview. “I think people have been starved for content. We haven’t had a lot of new content since the middle of March.”

That means a race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway could be on the horizon. Rumors are a race in May is on the docket in South Florida. Also, don’t rule out a race at the Daytona International Speedway in the very near future too since Florida is willing to host races again.

On Monday, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas said the same.

The equals what North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper, tweeted from his account last Wednesday afternoon.

Georgia jumped in line on Monday evening. That opens up the Texas Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway to racing too.

With the Coca-Cola 600 right now scheduled as the date of NASCAR’s restart on May 24, Homestead or Atlanta could now run as soon as May 17. If they can’t pull that off in less than a month’s time, look for one of them to be May 31 on the revised schedule. Then, it could be June 7 for NASCAR going to Texas, which makes a ton of sense since IndyCar is trying to combine the weekend with them due to IndyCar not having money in place to share their TV money like NASCAR does. The other one that wouldn’t run on May 17 if available could be June 14 since Sonoma isn’t willing to race without fans.

The best NASCAR option is this – Homestead (May 17), Charlotte (May 24), Kansas (May 31), Texas (June 7), Atlanta (June 14) and Darlington (June 21). The easy part of this is, they’re all 1.5-mile tracks. Not much change is needed to the race cars which could limit team members working on them back in the shops. Then, there’s some talk of holding races without any practice sessions too. That keeps a group of guys not at race tracks in confined garage stalls. Also, there’s talks of controlled pit stops. That too keeps some guys away from pit road.

See why this isn’t going to be “normal” under any circumstance?

Races without fans, without any practice and without live pit stops. All are ways to get back to racing but be a “new normal” for the interim.

Some may ask then, why? Why do this? Why do all these radical changes when you can just wait it out?

Reality is, tracks need NASCAR because NASCAR brings money with them still – a lot of it. NASCAR holds a lucrative deal worth billions, with a “b.” If no NASCAR race is held, that means no money coming in which means a loss of jobs and a potential closure of that track. So, even without fans in the grandstands, the tracks are still profitable and everyone can be around for 2021. IndyCar, like the tracks, need NASCAR as a result of that.

This comes at the expense of being a made for TV event though as fans can’t witness in person. For a sport that can’t replicate in person action in comparison to TV, it’s big.

Watching a race from the grandstands is far different than on your couch in the living room. From the smell of the exhaust and concession stands, to the feel and noise of the cars, to the sight of the speed, there’s just nothing like it. TV can’t capture that no matter how hard that they try to do so.

But, on the flipside, with no other sports being scheduled any time soon, people that have been so starved to see live programing, well there’s a good chance that they’ll tune in. That means a start, even without fans in the stands, can capture new fans in the process that normally wouldn’t have watched on TV nor gone to the race track to begin with. That in turn helps maybe capture a new fan to go to the race tracks when the gates open again. That also helps sponsorships on the rolling billboards on the race tracks and on the TV set for commercials.

The problem is, while the return to racing is starting to get clearer, the return for tracks to open their doors to fans still isn’t due to all those reasons above. From what it looks like, we can’t expect fans in grandstands any time soon.

Social distancing has worked well. I think it could have worked even better if the “essential” businesses were defined as “life or death.” If your job didn’t affect someone’s life, then you shouldn’t go out. Period. Too many businesses and too people thought they were “essential” when lets be honest, nothing about what they did was essential. They weren’t saving lives. But, they still went to work because owners were forced to stay open, albeit in a different “normal” because they felt like they needed to in order to stay afloat. They held on those “essential” guidelines even though in life terms, they weren’t “essential” in the slightest. Think on how much quicker that we could have slowed the curve if we narrowed it down even further to those essential being “life or death.”

The problem is, we couldn’t. It would affect our economies too much. So, we had a moderated version of our new lives. That’s why the curve slowed, but didn’t completely go away. Now, as we start to climb out of it, I hope that it’s not too soon and fear that opening the gates up this year to race fans may see many friends that I have in the motorsports community affected by this even more than they already are now. I fear for the fans’ lives and their families if we get going too soon.

The thing is, I’m not alone which is why I don’t think promoters are going to open the gates any time in the near future because of this. The tunnels to the infield at race tracks for race teams may eventually open, but don’t expect to join them there.