This was supposed to be a grand weekend for Travis Pastrana, ESPN and NASCAR. The action sports star was to pull off his long-planned “Pastranathon,” going back and forth from the X Games in Los Angeles to Indianapolis for his highly anticipated NASCAR Nationwide Series debut.
Travis Pastrana Breaks Foot, Leg In X Games Crash; NASCAR Nationwide Series Debut Postponed
Instead, this weekend has turned into one of incredible disappointment.
Pastrana crashed his bike during Thursday night’s X Games Moto X Best Trick competition and Pastrana broke both his leg and foot, according to an ESPN.com report. The injury will require surgery, thus canceling his attempt to run the Nationwide Series race at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis.
The lack of Pastrana’s presence in the Nationwide race is a huge letdown for NASCAR and ESPN. The entire reason Pastrana was making his NASCAR national series debut this weekend was to provide a way to cross-promote NASCAR to the X Games demographic, and vice versa.
NASCAR and ESPN would like nothing more than for Pastrana’s 18-24-year-old fans to tune in and give stock car racing a try. The Pastranathon would have made that an easy transition.
Now, it’s over before it really even started. Pastrana has to be tremendously disappointed on a personal level.
Though he has six more Nationwide starts scheduled for the fall, it’s unclear when Pastrana will recover and make his debut. With an injury like the one he sustained on Friday night, it might be awhile.
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