NASCAR goes West to LA Coliseum as warmup for the Super Bowl

LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASCAR is hitting Los Angeles a week ahead of the Super Bowl, grabbing the spotlight with its wildest idea yet: The Clash, the unofficial season-opening, stock-car version of the Pro Bowl, will run at the iconic Coliseum in a made-for-Fox Sports spectacular.

Yes, that's correct. A temporary track has been built inside the Coliseum, where race cars will rattle around a quarter mile of asphalt carefully laid over the grass field that has hosted two summer Olympics, the USC Trojans and the hometown Rams for four seasons until their new stadium opened in 2020.

The first Super Bowl in 1967 was played at the Coliseum, but the Rams will play for the NFL championship 10 miles away at Sofi Stadium a week from Sunday. NASCAR is offering an appetizer with its season-opening event, until now raced every year since its 1979 inception at Daytona International Speedway in Florida.

Run under different formats with different presenting sponsors over the years, The Clash was the opening event of Speed Weeks and a warmup for the Daytona 500 — NASCAR's own version of Super Bowl. But NASCAR has been willing to look beyond cookie-cutter tracks in traditional markets.

Ben Kennedy, NASCAR's senior vice president of strategy and innovation, brainstormed moving The Clash exhibition out of Daytona for the first time and instead stage it as a Hollywood event not all that far from Hollywood. The Busch Light Clash will run Sunday night, heat races will set the field, DJ Skee will play during cautions and Ice Cube will headline a halftime show.

The Coliseum accommodates about 78,000, but modifications to build the track has cut capacity for Sunday night to roughly 60,000 seats. Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's chief racing development