Click here to follow us on Twitter @circletrackplus   Click here to like us on Facebook 

No Monster Energy Cup race was run over the weekend. Easter is the last of the sacred holidays. Mother’s Day weekend was once thought taboo. When another year rolls around, Daytona Beach won’t have the Fourth of July (or thereabouts), and NASCAR will try once again to jumpstart the Brickyard by giving it an encore to Memorial Day.

No race? It’s almost a relief to have a damned good reason for empty grandstands.

Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne and Alfred continue to dicker in the Batcave. They’re going to run the All-Star Race as a preview of rules they don’t plan on implementing until 2021. It’s a remake of “Back to the Future, Part II.”

I don’t know. Maybe nothing works because we’re preoccupied. Could it be that Fox Sports’ biggest competition is Fox News? The passions of the country – whether pro-Trump or anti-Trump, Game of Thrones, immigration, weed, wall, wind, women, uh, wine and song – have turned politics into the national pastime. “Take me out to the protest, take me out to the crowd, buy me a flag and a can of spray paint, shut your mouth and don’t tell me I can’t.”

Racing got lost in the commotion, no matter how much the Lords of Daytona stirred up a never-ending commotion of their own.

For well over a decade, I’ve been batting my brain to figure out what happened to NASCAR. What made it gradually and agonizingly go out of style? This is just my latest eccentric hypothesis. I remember when dinosaurs walked the earth.

The hell of it is there are no Russian hackers to blame. No ties have been established with Julian Assange. Still, NASCAR could use a Humpy Wheeler Investigation. Someone needs to talk to all the millions who went away. Imperial NASCAR spends too much time analyzing the millions who have remained.

Someone needs to investigate why mentions of NASCAR races draw shouts of derision when blasted to restless fans at local dirt tracks. Someone needs to examine why young people would rather play cornhole outside the track than go inside the track. Someone needs to take under advisement that the fans most loyal were the ones they priced out of business.

Perhaps historians will conclude that the Fall of the France Empire began at the Last Great Colosseum.

Nah. Too simple.