Live From Daytona 500: NASCAR Commemorates 75th-Anniversary Season With Special Mixed-Reality Open
The Famous Group will be at the center of the diamond celebration
Story Highlights
February 21, 1948. That’s the date when 69 days’ worth of conversations at the Streamline Hotel on Daytona Beach led to the founding of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. Nearly 75 years to the day, and 6 miles to the west at Daytona International Speedway, NASCAR and The Famous Group (TFG) will honor this illustrious history with an elaborate mixed-reality (MR) open featuring past winners and their respective cars at the top of Fox Sports’ broadcast.
“Being able to take an event like the Daytona 500 to create awareness about our 75th season is pretty incredible,” says Amy Anderson, head of content strategy, NASCAR. “It’s the one race that brings everyone together at the start of our season.”
A preview of the mixed-reality open for Fox Sports’ broadcast of the 2023 Daytona 500
The Mission for Creative: Condensing 75 Years Into Two Minutes
NASCAR has come a long way since its beginning in the early 1900s. Rooted in bootleggers’ driving small, quick, and maneuverable cars to evade detection during Prohibition, the activity slowly became a sport that merged the latest in machinery and the need for speed. After its founding by former mechanic Bill France Sr., NASCAR ran an organized race on the sands of Daytona Beach annually until Feb. 23, 1958.
Since 1958, the race has been run at Daytona International Speedway. In April 2021, Anderson joined the NASCAR family to assist the NASCAR Studios division and, almost immediately, was brought on to the commemoration project to precede Sunday’s jewel event. She and SVP/Chief Digital Officer Tim Clark put their heads together on the effort.
“We’re interested in doing things that engage the fans in new ways,” she says. “Tim eventually reached out to The Famous Group and realized that we needed to start talking about ideas with them.”
Known as the premier destination for mixed-reality activations for live sports broadcasts, TFG has a track record of success. Projects in its portfolio include work with teams and venues — the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium, the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium, the Houston Texans at NRG Stadium — as well as league-specific initiatives like the NFL 100 All-Time Team introduced at Super Bowl LIV on Fox in 2020. One project in particular — the MR panther devised by Director/Executive Producer, Game Presentation and Production, Mike Bonner — inspired NASCAR Studios to enlist the help of The Famous Group. Not only did it strike close to home creatively, but the home of the Panthers is less than a mile from NASCAR’s office in Charlotte, NC.
NASCAR’s Ken Martin, seen here in an interview for Untold Stories, made sure that the look of the MR cars was accurate.
Initially, Clark and Anderson contemplated showing off the concept during NASCAR’s unofficial start to the season: the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. The prospect of having this presentation done at the iconic Los Angeles Coliseum was tantalizing, but kicking off the 75th-anniversary celebration on its biggest stage with fans of all ages was the better option.
“If you’re a longtime fan or you’re a new fan, you’re going to find some reason to create that connection with the sport,” says Anderson. “We want fans to say, ‘I remember going to that race or seeing that moment’ or give someone a new experience with their family member that makes them want to be a part of new memories moving forward.”
Having 75 years of history can be seen as both a good and a bad thing: an extensive history allows multiple ideas to come to the surface, but it’s difficult to shrink 7½ decades of memories into two minutes. When the final plan was conceived and put into motion, NASCAR Director, Historical Content, Ken Martin made sure that small and big details were accurate.
“People know paint schemes and sponsors of cars over the years,” adds Anderson. “It’s cool to see the level of attention that these fans have about the packages that teams used to run.”
Linking Past and Present: The Rundown of Sunday’s Presentation
The creative team came up with what they’re calling “The Greatest Lap.” On a mixed-reality track running atop the actual track at Daytona International Speedway, cars from different eras will race side by side. As the cars make their way around, mixed-reality videoboards will pop up along the track to display real-time highlights of past Daytona 500s.
From a legacy standpoint, NASCAR owns the rights to team names and cars, so the field will feature winners from different generations. These include the father-son duo of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the first winner, in 1958, Lee Petty. In addition, fans watching the race in person will be able to see the presentation via the LED videoboards at the track.
Rehearsals conducted throughout the week have produced remarkable results, with real-life cars matching the pace and speed of their MR counterparts. With a project of this size and scale, the biggest challenge was making sure that the activation fit on the 2.5-mile track.
NASCAR’s Amy Anderson, seen in the broadcast compound, led the anniversary project with Tim Clark.
“We’re tracking cars going around a large and long canvas,” notes Anderson. “We needed to do all of this while also making sure that the cars look realistic and mixing together videos of various resolutions. There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle.”
On the broadcast side of the endeavor, NASCAR collaborated with Fox Sports SVP, Production and Talent Development, Jacob Ullman; SVP, NASCAR Production, Steve Craddock; SVP, Technical and Field Operations, Mike Davies; and VP, Production, Lindsey Mandia. Director Brian Lilley and Producer Jacob Jolivette will helm this presentation from Game Creek Video Cleatus mobile unit — the Fox Sports pairing that worked on the MR tribute to Jackie Robinson at the 2022 MLB All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium. NASCAR Senior Director, Broadcasting, Lauren Hill; Managing Director, Domestic Broadcasting, Ben Baker, and others from NASCAR’s broadcasting team will work with The Famous Group and SMT in Game Creek Larkspur.
Behind the Scenes: The Famous Group Supplies Tech Backbone
Brainstorming such an ambitious effort is a fairly simple task when the creative juices begin to flow, but powering this behemoth of a project from an operational perspective is not. The person responsible for bringing these cars to life is The Famous Group Head of Mixed Reality Erik Beaumont. To produce exact replicas of the vehicles, Executive Creative Director Hemu Karadkar, Beaumont, and the rest of the TFG team relied on any and all reference points available, as well as guidance from Martin.
“Since not every NASCAR model was accessible,” says Beaumont, “we had to do 3D scans of replicas, real cars, and toy cars; rebuild them to match the historical footage and images; [and have them] validated by Ken. To animate a pack of 16 cars, we created a parametric animation system that takes the track into account for extreme flexibility. The track itself was lidar-scanned, giving us a 100% accurate surface on which to animate the cars, so that they react correctly where there are bumps or unevenness in the tarmac.”
As for the tech enabling the spectacle, six cameras will be at the ready around the track: three tracked cameras with Unreal Engine 5.1 software on each, three that can be cut to and switched for interaction with crowds and the physical world. With coordination handled by Stage Precision, the presentation will be produced in 1080p60 HDR.
Game Creek Video Larkspur will house staffers from NASCAR, The Famous Group, and SMT for the broadcast open.
There are both similarities and differences between this weekend’s activation and TFG’s involvement with the NFL 100 celebration in Miami. The most obvious comparison is that each honors a major milestone for the organization and spotlights noteworthy excerpts from its history in a short production. The major contrast is that Sunday’s ceremony won’t include the physical presence of the drivers; for the NFL celebration, more than 65 NFL alumni appeared on the field at Hard Rock Stadium for Super Bowl LIV.
For The Famous Group, what started out as a thought has become a full-fledged, successful operation. The company is always looking to make subsequent MR broadcast projects bigger and better, and its relationship with NASCAR and Fox Sports takes the effort at Daytona 500 to new heights.
“We can’t thank Tim and Amy enough for allowing us to take on such an important moment in the history of motorsports,” says Andrew Isaacson, partner, The Famous Group. “Their collaboration over the last four months, along with the team at Fox Sports, has been second to none. This mixed-reality experience, combined with the thrill, history, excitement, and cutting-edge storytelling, will make this one of our most incredible activations to date.”
Reliving History: NASCAR Studios Develops Series for 2023 Season
Besides the Daytona 500, NASCAR Studios aims to treat fans to a diverse campaign of content during the 2023 season. Under a partnership with Fox Sports, NASCAR original programing will be seen on the broadcaster’s linear and live-streaming platforms. During the season, eight features will air on prerace program NASCAR Raceday. Among them is the Reenactments series, which re-creates a handful of notable events in NASCAR’s history. For example, the Daytona 500 edition of the show will focus on that fateful day at the Streamline Hotel in 1948. Another series will be Photo Finish, which puts drivers who were included in some of the greatest on-track finishes on an immersive 360-degree sound stage.
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On NASCAR’s digital avenues, fans will get another set of material to watch. A series that is already releasing content surrounding Sunday’s big race is Untold Stories. Digging deeper into certain races on the NASCAR calendar, interviews with former drivers, spotters, team members, and other dignitaries can help fans understand the stories behind the race. One of the first efforts in the series recounts Earnhardt Sr.’s first Daytona 500 victory, in 1998. The four-minute-long video resides on NASCAR’s YouTube channel, but the moment is being repurposed for a shortened version on social media along with another video featuring in-car audio on top of footage of the race.
Call them Captain Jack and Sunday Money. #NASCAR75 | #DAYTONA500 pic.twitter.com/Y3LBfu2mrl
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 15, 2023
“We’re focusing on the way we’re incorporating all of that content [on all of our platforms] by cutting it three different ways,” says Anderson. “This includes short-form execution on social media, long-form, and handing it off to teams, drivers, and our tracks to share as well.”
Other projects include monthly versions of Radioactive with a 75th Anniversary twist, including “Retro” and “Best Of” clips with past in-race communications between drivers and their respective teams, and NASCAR Rewind, which places current drivers in the shoes of former drivers through interviews and video replays of iconic racing moments. In the long-form department, NASCAR will produce three new films that pay homage to NASCAR’s past, present, and future: a piece on the oldest active team in the field, Wood Brothers Racing; the deep lineage of families who have competed in the sport; and the impact of the Urban Racing League on motorsports.
To Anderson’s point, social-media channels of individual drivers (such as two-time Daytona 500 winner Jimmie Johnson), teams, and tracks are showcasing NASCAR’s long history through unique content of their own.
Here’s to the memories we’ve made and the ones we’ll make along the way!#NASCAR75 pic.twitter.com/LBgOdgckTY
— Daytona International Speedway (@DAYTONA) February 17, 2023
Headlights on the Future: NASCAR Gets Set for the Next 75 Years
There’s no greater way to honor NASCAR than with a tribute to the winners who have turned the Daytona 500 into the Great American Race. At a venue where unknowns have become superstars and superstars have become legends, the sport is consistently writing the next chapters of its story. As the season progresses, the next 75 years will be on the table, but forging ahead can be done only by knowing how far you’ve come.
“One of the things that we talk about a lot is what’s going to happen in 2024,” says Anderson. “It’s about how we take the momentum of this season with us as we go forward.”
