NASCAR feels different as it returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway this weekend for the main-race Dixie Vodka 400 on Sunday after today's undercard Xfinity Series race.
It still feels different for the wrong reasons as the ongoing covid-19 threat entering its second year continues to limit crowds and drivers' time at the track.
It feels different in good ways now, too, though.
There is a newness at play, a fresh breeze. This is not your grandfather's or even your father's NASCAR with its redneck roots harking to its birth in the segregated late 1940s. The sport's recent disassociation with the Confederate flag stands towering at the forefront. So does white drivers uniting to make that anti-racism video last summer as the streets filled with protest.
"NASCAR is trending up," as Homestead track President Al Garcia.
Because of the ongoing covid-19 threat Homestead is being allowed only 18% of its capacity this weekend, or up to 10,000 race fans.
But that's progress. When Homestead hosted its previous NASCAR race in June, it became the first major American league sport to allow any fans back at all, and it was 1,000 invited guests encompassing local military and first-responders.
NASCAR awareness is buoyed by who's getting on board.
Basketball icon Michael Jordan joined top driver Denny Hamlin to form 23XI Racing earlier this month, and chose Bubba Wallace as their driver. That's Jordan, among the biggest names in American sports history, aligning with the sport's only current Black driver.
At Daytona this month Wallace became the first Black driver to lead a lap. His watershed first victory is a story waiting to happen, and Jordan (expected to attend Sunday's race) is behind it all now.
"He's just a big fan," Hamlin said of Jordan. "Now he's embedded in it very heavily."
Miami rapper Pitbull has lent his international fame to the Trackhouse Racing team as a new part owner. In their car is Mexican Daniel Suarez, the first Latino driver to compete in a full season.
"We're going to show the world NASCAR is not only a sport but it's a culture," Pitbull said. "This is a revolution."
What for decades was a good ol' boys club of white men is beginning to see small signs of diversity, the fruit of the sport's Drive For Diversity initiative that helps encourage and develop Black, Hispanic and women drivers.
New Orleans Saints star running back Alvin Kamara is on board now, too. The Confederate flag ban and Wallace's activism last summer caught his eye.
"This is not the sport that someone who looks like me would be into. I'm being realistic," Kamara said. "But I feel like I'm part of it now."
The fresh breeze sweeping across NASCAR also includes a more varied schedule with the addition of new venues, new markets. It includes an e-Sports version.
Heck, in 2021, Roush Fenway Racing has become the first team to be certified carbon neutral. What!? NASCAR going green? Something is going on here.
The newness extends to the drivers themselves. A new wave is happening.
Old stars recently have retired. Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Danica Patrick, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Stewart.
But into the mix arrives a new wave, led by Chase Elliott, stepping up to challenge to be The Next Big Thing. He won five races last season and was second at Homestead. He won the NASCAR Cup season championship, at age 24, to end the year.
This year, two first-time winners have won the season's first two races in Michael McDowell at the Daytona 500 and Christopher Bell at the Daytona Road Course. That hasn't happened in NASCAR since 1960.
Might another first-time winner arise at Homestead on Sunday? Might it even be Bubba Wallace?
NASCAR finds itself full of possibilities these days, a good place to be.