The White Zone: Let’s add some other events to the All-Star weekend

“The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading…” and I want to know why we don’t do other activities on All-Star weekend.

Every year on the weekend before the Coca-Cola 600, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series gathers at Charlotte Motor Speedway to run the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. It’s composed of winners from the previous season and the races preceding it in the current season, past winners of the event, past Sprint Cup Series champions, the winners of the two Sprint Showdown races and the recipient of the fan vote. It’s your old school Saturday night shootout where the winner gets a million dollars.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk. I’m here to talk about the lack of miscellaneous events that you find at All-Star events of the stick and ball sports.

Now you could argue that the city of Charlotte and the NASCAR shops are in and of themselves miscellaneous events. However, when I look at the All-Star weekends in other sports, they tend to have a common denominator. They all have skills events that precede the main event. These events include the home run derby in Major League Baseball, the SuperSkills competition in the NHL and the shooting stars competition, the skills challenge, the three-point contest and the slam dunk contest in the NBA.

Now not all of them have miscellaneous events with their All-Star game. The NFL Pro Bowl doesn’t have any skills competitions preceding it. Although you could argue that the Pro Bowl itself is a miscellaneous event that leads up to the Super Bowl.

Some of you might remember that we used to have skills events leading up to the All-Star Race. The first one was always the pit crew challenge which gave the winning team of the event the first pit stall choice on race night. They did away with it in 2013 due to a lack of sponsorship.

Another, for a few years, was the burnout contest where the track brought in some celebrities to score the burnouts. For some reason, that too went away.

So I’ve been giving this some thought and I’d like to throw out some suggestions for skills events. One would be a celebrity race event. The basic premise is that you put some famous people in cars – probably something from the Richard Petty Racing Experience or the Dale Jarrett Racing Adventure – and let them run a mini race. Before you say, “they don’t know how to drive a race car,” they’ll let anyone drive a car if they let me drive 10 laps around Talladega. The presence of these celebrities might bring some added exposure to the All-Star Race itself.

Personally, I’d rather see something like having drivers from other forms of racing do this event instead of pop culture stars, but this time of May is when the big boys are preparing for Memorial Day Sunday. Which is what I, and others in the racing world, consider the single biggest day of racing on the planet.

Another thing I’d like to see is an obstacle course race where you put down cones and the drivers have to navigate the makeshift road course in the fastest time.

This next one is not so much a car-related challenge, but it still requires skill nonetheless. We take the four drivers with the most Twitter followers, give them a minute and see who can sign the most memorabilia.

And, since this is a fantasy, let’s bring back the Pit Crew Challenge.

If you guys have ideas for other skills events, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section.

My plane is about to take off, so I must wrap this up. Until next time, I’ll leave you with this fact. Nylon is made from coal and petroleum.