Could Auto Racing Work as an Olympic Sport?

With the delayed 2020 Olympics officially underway, I can’t help but ponder this interesting idea. With baseball and softball returning to the summer games for the first time since Beijing 2008 and new events such as skateboarding, karate, surfing, and sports climbing being added, why not motorsports? It could be a little complicated, but I might have some ideas on how motorsports could be implemented for the Summer Olympics in the future. To start things off, there was a time where motor racing was actually an Olympic sport, well, kind of.

Motor racing was contested in the 1900 Olympics in Paris, France, in conjunction with the 1900 World Expo. However, these events were not generally classified as official, although the International Olympic Committee, IOC, never decided which events were Olympic events. The manufacturers were the entries rather than the drivers, and not much is known about who competed in it. The most notable of the motor racing events was a Paris-Toulouse-Paris race won by Louis Renault, one of the co-founders of Renault. This was the only time motor racing was an Olympic sport and this was during a time where the automobile was just starting out. This was even a decade before the first Indianapolis 500. There was an attempt at bringing auto racing back to the Olympics and that was through a bid for the 2012 Olympics from Dallas, Texas. A recent Twitter post from nascarman revealed a newspaper article from 2000 that the plan was to make auto racing a demonstration sport with an “international race” held at Texas Motor Speedway. Imagine Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Juan Pablo Montoya, Michael Schumacher, and some of the world’s best competing in that? Now let’s talk about how auto racing could work in the Olympics.

Depending on the host city, the first sanctioned event I could think of is doing something like a 24-Hour LeMans Endurance race. Or you could do a six- or twelve-hour event if that is more beneficial to the Olympic Schedule. An Olympic 24-Hour race could be an added crown jewel event to sports car racing that comes every four years. For example, for Paris 2024, you could run what would essentially be a second 24-Hour of LeMans, or LA 2028 there are tracks like Sonoma, Laguna Seca, or Willow Springs that could be utilized. The next event in auto racing that could be used is RallyCross, racing on a mixed-surface racing circuit. There we could see the likes of Scott Speed, Tanner Foust, Kevin Hansen, Sebastian Leob, Travis Pastrana or Johan Kristofferson compete for the gold medal. Rallycross racing used to be a sport in the X-Games until after 2015. Rallycross racing has a good standing in America as well as other European countries and could provide excitement for the Olympics, plus as previously mentioned, it would fill in the gap after exiting from the X-Games. Lastly, looking back at Dallas 2012’s idea of an international race at Texas Motor Speedway, you could do Oval Track Racing with spec cars similar to the SRX. Again, you could invite anyone that an event like that, especially how we saw drivers like Ernie Francis Jr, Hailie Deegan, Tony Stewart, Willy T Ribbs, Scott Speed, Tony Kanaan, and Helio Castroneves, compete from all different racing sanctions in one circuit. So even if you just wanted to do some sort of international race like Dallas 2012 was planning, then it could certainly work.

Are there cons to this? There will be some hurdles to jump through. One issue that could pop up is the sanctioning body for this event. Most likely the FIA World Endurance Championship could jump to this event, then again, the FIA would most likely be the sanctioning body for Olympic Auto Racing in general. The other con to this would have to be the cars themselves. Like the IOC would have to work with FIA or whoever it would be, to possibly build spec cars for such a competition, kind of like what the SRX does. Many people would also go on to comment that race car drivers are not athletes, which is dead wrong. These drivers have to physically and mentally prepare themselves to make split-second decisions on the track that can decide an entire race, or in some cases an entire season. Drivers battle through the heat inside stock cars and the G’s from open-wheel racing. Lastly would be working around scheduling. NASCAR was able to take two weeks off from the Olympics, but how will that work for other sanctions if drivers want to go over and compete in the games? There would for sure have to be some sort of scheduling adjustments that would have to be made every four years.

Could auto racing work as an Olympic Sport? It possibly could. While there are some obstacles involved, it would be exciting to see Daniel Riccardo, Lewis Hamilton, Kyle Busch, Chase Elliott, Helio Castroneves, among many others around the world compete for the coveted Olympic gold medal. How cool would it be for some of these drivers to get to say they got to race with the world’s best and add an Olympic medal to their racing resume? For now, we can only fantasize and dream.