Category: Olympics

The Olympics head towards their conclusion this coming weekend, and the NBC forced auto racing moratorium will mercifully end. As I stated in my post on Monday, IMSA showed that Peacock could show a race during the international games festival. I have seen several posts on social media suggesting that auto racing should be an Olympic sport.

I disagree for many reasons. First, the Olympics games are about what can be achieved by using the human body to run, jump, throw, flex, lift, or push. Racing involves motorized assistance which is not in the Olympic spirit. While there are some events I don’t think belong in the Olympics, I get why they are there.

Auto racing as an Olympic sport would have several major hurdles. Races are not inexpensive to stage, a location needs to be secured, a neutral type of car would be required, and how many teams would be willing to allow their drivers to participate?

Racing as an Olympic sport would require an IROC type car, identically prepared spec machines, which would likely favor sports car or NASCAR drivers. The track would need to be one that could provide decent competition, and not one that creates a track position contest.

I am sure drivers would be eager to participate in a series of races in the Olympics, but would their team owners be as enthusiastic? I can’t see Red Bull allowing Max Verstappen to take two weeks off for the Olympics, or Chip Ganassi letting Scott Dixon drive for New Zealand at an Olympic racing event.

Who would finance the racing events? Would national Olympic committees want to take on the added and not small expenses of racing? Would current team sponsors be willing to contribute even more funds to the team for this effort?

If racing occurs during the Olympics, I would rather see each series conduct their own regular season events. I don’t see Olympic auto racing as a viable option for an exhibition all-star series. Let’s leave that type of thing for the off season.