NASCAR became the first major sport to return to action following a lengthy absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Empty grandstands all around, but 40 of NASCAR’s best drivers piloted those 550 horsepower beasts around the Darlington Raceway with the whole world watching in anticipation.

For one driver, he felt like this was a Christmas miracle.

“Up until probably about two or three hours before the race, I was ready for something to go wrong,” Brad Keselowski said in a post race zoom call with the media.

“What’s it going to be? Is someone going to be sick? Or is there going to be somebody boycotting outside the racetrack? But nobody did. Nothing bad happened. They pulled this thing off. It feels little bit like a Christmas miracle.”

See, the last time we’ve even witnessed a race was way back on March 8 at the Phoenix Raceway. We didn’t know it then, but what would happen during the ensuing week would alter not only the sporting world, but also our lives as we know it.

Nothing that we do now even slightly resembles what we did on that second weekend of March. The victor of Sunday’s race, Kevin Harvick, donned a face mask in an empty victory lane celebrating with a party of one.

“The weirdest part of the day for me was getting out of the car and not hearing anybody cheering,” Harvick said after becoming the 14th different driver to earn his 50th career NASCAR win in their premiere series. 

With so much social distancing and stay-at-home orders, the general population was starving for something to take their minds off this scary world that we live in today.

The biggest “normal” distraction is sports but the sporting world went dark on that week following the NASCAR race at Phoenix. The NBA reacted first when Rudy Gobert tested positive for the novel virus on March 11. They suspended their season and have yet to return. Everything on the NCAA level was suspended immediately with no NCAA Tournament, nor the start of their spring sports. The next thing that they’ll focus on now is a plan for their Fall sports and nothing before then.

Golf stopped too and other than a charity event, remains on pause until June. MLB was never able to start up and it doesn’t look like they will at all until July at the earliest. The NFL has held the draft only.

NASCAR, well they decided a couple of week ago that they can make a return work — albeit, it won’t look anything like it did on March 8. Part of their plans were racing behind closed doors, limiting at track personnel and extensive testing.

There’d be no practice, no qualifying and just one pit reporter. The TV booth would utilize their Charlotte studios. The restart of the year would see races at tracks close to their North Carolina base — hence Sunday’s return on the 1.366- mile race track in nearly by South Carolina.

Without the return to any other live sport other than some minor leagues, all eyes were on NASCAR this weekend. This was the first sporting event on TV that we didn’t already know the outcome. How NASCAR conducted themselves was going to be scrutinized under a microscope by everyone watching. Other sporting leagues are eventually wanting to get restarted again too and they were going to be watching intently with how NASCAR did things.

Luckily, Sunday’s race went off without a hitch. Everyone that came through the gates, an estimated 900 people, all passed a health assessment. Everything from start to finish couldn’t have gone much better.

“Things actually went smoother than we could have expected, getting all the teams in,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer. “Inspection went well.  All in all a good day for the sport.  Excited to be back.  Hopefully the fans enjoyed it on television.  Odd not having the fans in the stands, but we know the fans were with us in spirit for sure.

“From everyone we talked to in the garage area, the entry process went incredibly well.  Everybody was here on time.  The cars were out and through inspection.

“I think everybody found their groove.  Didn’t have to tell anyone or remind anyone to wear a mask.  I think the industry really came together and did a tremendous job to enable us to get to the race. All in all I thought it went really, really well.

“This was not easy.  But everybody came together in a real spirit of collaboration.”

The drivers said that it was a unique situation on their end too. For starters, they weren’t at the race track for a couple of days prior to practice an qualify. They showed up around four hours prior to start to get screened, then hightailed it to their motorhomes until 10 minutes before firing engines.

“Look, I’ve been around this deal for a long time,” Harvick continued. “This is not like anything I’ve ever experienced.  I can tell you it’s very similar to coming back after 9/11.  That day had a hundred thousand fans in the stands, now you have no fans.

Harvick, said the no fans is going to be the hardest thing to adjust to.

“When the engines are running, you’re kind of in your own little world in the car. The practice and in-the-car part are something we can figure out.  The not having any fans in the infield, for me that took some of the enthusiasm of the win away just because of the fact you weren’t able to celebrate with the crowd.

“For me, that was really awkward because I feed off of that stuff, enjoy those types of moments.  For me, didn’t really know what to say after the race because it’s such a unique situation that we’re in.

“Usually you get out of the car and the crowd is screaming and yelling, react.  Today out of the car it was like, well, I don’t really know what to do here.  It’s a situation that you’ve got Regan from FOX six feet away, a masked man.  I didn’t know if I was supposed to put a mask on and talk to him.  They had a six-foot boom mic you were talking to.  There was that sense of awkwardness until we get all this situated to exactly what we’re supposed to do.

“When we got done, everybody left.  The procedure said to drive back to Victory Lane.  I got in my car, drove to Victory Lane.  There were two photographers there, no team guys.  I was able to kind of get my team guys a nice little elbow bump there as I left Victory Lane, tell them great job.  Those guys didn’t get a chance to take a picture with their car.  Just a lot of sacrifices that go into it.”

Third place finisher Kurt Busch agreed.

“Yeah, there were those times when you’d look in the grandstands,” Busch said. “When you see an empty seat, you feel a set of eyeballs that are coming through the camera lens.”

Busch said the other awkward moment was walking down pit road just prior to the race.

“Just walking out on pit road, crew members with masks on, halfway you don’t recognize anybody until I got to my No. 1 guys.”

Both drivers know that this was done for the betterment of the sport and how much effort that NASCAR and their partners put into this.  

“In the end, in the big picture of things, being able to do what we did today, and that’s race, is what everybody wants to do,” said Harvick.

“What a tremendous effort,” Busch said of the race going off without any problems. “The collaborative effort from everybody from the NASCAR side, the officials, the team owners, the drivers, our television broadcast partners, radio.  Everybody had to reach out of the normal, reach out of the box, do it with common sense, do it through all of these Zoom, Skype, Team Viewer exercises through the phone, through the computers.  What a job.  I’m very proud of the effort we put forth today.”

Harvick, said that with the potential of some new eye balls on the sport, they all knew that the pressure was on not the “screw this up.”

“Everybody’s excited about being back, but there’s still that awkwardness of not wanting to screw anything up.  We didn’t really want to communicate closely or do anything that might look wrong.  I think today’s message was really important to be able to make sure it was sent correctly.

“It’s definitely a unique opportunity.  At least we can put ourselves in front of people to let them make a decision whether they like NASCAR or not.  I think as you learn about our sport, it’s a great family sport with a lot of blue-collar people that are just like the people that probably tuned in for the first time today.

“There’s a lot of people that put a lot of effort into this.  I’m glad it went the way that it went.  I hope people that watched for the first time liked what they saw.  This is a unique racetrack here at Darlington.  In the end, it’s just having that opportunity to present yourself to new people.  Hopefully you can make a lot of new fans as you go forward.”

Next, is a weeknight race at the same race track on Wednesday night. Test No. 2.