Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Charlotte Motor Speedway Data

Charlotte Motor Speedway Data

Race #: 12 of 36 (05-29-11)
Track Size: 1.5 miles
· Banking/Corners: 24 degrees
· Banking/Straights: 5 degrees
· Frontstretch: 1,980 feet
· Backstretch: 1,500 feet


Driver Rating at Charlotte
Jimmie Johnson 114.7
Kyle Busch 108.2
Joey Logano 102.8
Kasey Kahne 95.7
Mark Martin 92.6
Matt Kenseth 89.4
Jeff Gordon 88.9
Brian Vickers 88.0
Jeff Burton 87.3
Greg Biffle 86.6
Note: Driver Rating compiled from 2005-2010 races (12 total) at Charlotte Motor Speedway.


Qualifying/Race Data
2010 pole winner: Ryan Newman (187.546 mph, 28.793 seconds)
2010 race winner: Kurt Busch(144.966 mph, 05-30-10)
Qualifying record: Elliott Sadler (193.216 mph, 27.948 seconds,10-13-05)
600-mile race record: Bobby Labonte (151.952 mph, 05-28-95)


Charlotte Motor Speedway:

Charlotte Motor Speedway:


History
· Construction began on Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1959.
· The track’s first NASCAR Sprint Cup race was held on June 19, 1960.
· The track was repaved midseason in 1994.
· The track name changed from Charlotte Motor Speedway to Lowe’s Motor Speedway in 1999. It changed back to Charlotte Motor Speedway for the 2010 season.
· The track was re-paved again before the 2006 season.

Notebook
· There have been 104 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points races at Charlotte Motor Speedway, two races per year since the track opened in 1960. In 1961, there were two 100-mile qualifying points races held the week before the May race. The first six fall races at Charlotte were 400-mile events (1960-65).
· 37 drivers have posted poles, led by David Pearson with 14
· Fireball Roberts won the pole for the first race, in 1960.
· David Pearson posted 11 straight poles at Charlotte from the fall of 1973 through 1978.
· Ryan Newman leads all active drivers in poles, with nine. Jeff Gordon has eight.
· Jeff Gordon won five straight poles for the spring races between 1994 and 1998.
· 43 drivers have won races, led by Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip and Jimmie Johnson, with six each.
· Joe Lee Johnson won the first race, in 1960.
· There have been 13 back-to-back victories, including three consecutive by Fred Lorenzen (fall 1964 and both 1965) and four straight by Jimmie Johnson (both in 2004 and 2005).
· A sweep has occurred eight times, including each season from 2004-2007.
· 14 races have been won from the pole, the last by Jimmie Johnson (October 2009).
· Jimmie Johnson won the 2003 Coca-Cola 600 from the 37th starting position, the furthest back a race winner has started.
· Joey Logano is one of two drivers with more than two Charlotte races to average top-10 finishes (8.5); Jimmie Johnson is the other, with an average finish of 9.8.
· A number of active drivers earned their first win at CMS: Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte, Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears and David Reutimann. Inactive drivers David Pearson, Buddy Baker and Charlie Glotzbach also got their first series win at Charlotte.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Dover International Speedway

Dover International Speedway:


History
· The official opening of Dover International Speedway, then called Dover Downs International Speedway, was in 1969.
· The first NASCAR Sprint Cup race was held on July 6, 1969.
· The first two races at Dover were 300 miles. The race length was changed to 500 miles in 1971.
· The track surface was changed to concrete in 1995.
· The race length was changed to 400 miles beginning with the second race in 1997.
· The track name was changed to Dover International Speedway in 2002.

Notebook
· There have been 82 NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Dover International Speedway since the track opened in 1969.
· There was one race in 1969 and 1970. There have been two-a-year since 1971.
· Richard Petty won the track’s first NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
· There have been 35 different pole winners, led by David Pearson (six).
· David Pearson won the first pole in July 1969.
· Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman lead all active drivers, each with four poles.
· 32 different drivers have posted victories led by Bobby Allison and Richard Petty, each with seven.
· Jimmie Johnson leads all active drivers, with six victories.
· Hendrick Motorsports has a series-high 12 wins.
· 50 races at Dover have been won from a top-five starting position; 17 races have been won from a starting position outside the top 10.
· 13 drivers have won from the pole. The last to do so was Jimmie Johnson, in last season’s September race.
· The furthest back in the field a race winner started was 37th, by Kyle Petty in 1995.
· Several active drivers had their first start at Dover, including three past champions: David Ragan (finished 42nd in 2006), Kurt Busch (18th in 2000), Matt Kenseth (sixth in 1998) and Bobby Labonte (34th in 1991).
· In addition, Matt Kenseth (2002) and Michael Waltrip (1991) earned their first pole at Dover. Martin Truex Jr. won his first race there (2007).









Wednesday, May 11, 2011

North Wilkesboro Speedway Closing

North Wilkesboro Speedway Closing: For the last 1 ½ years, Speedway Associates Inc. has taken race fans and Wilkes County residents on a history-making ride with the reopening of North Wilkesboro Speedway which had been shuttered for 14 years. However, the business climate and a lack of working capital has now brought everything at the historic facility to a screeching halt. "Simply put, we made a lot of improvements to the speedway," Speedway Associates Inc. President Alton McBride Jr. said Monday. "We lined up some great events. However, even though we can project positive income from events at the speedway, we do not have the money needed on the front end to make those events happen. In spite of our complete investment in the speedway and in this community, we have run out of money necessary to go forward."


Despite the unexpected re-shuttering of the track after the 2011 season had begun, McBride said it was "not entirely a sad day" due to everything that had been accomplished, including receiving the North Carolina Motorsports Association's industry award for the track's contribution to motorsports in 2010. Speedway Associates began its journey at the five-eighths-mile track in November 2009 with an ambitious but strategic plan to reopen North Wilkesboro Speedway, which was closed after the fall NASCAR Cup race in 1996. Immediately, its name was adjusted to Historic North Wilkesboro Speedway in order to pay respect to the track's place in motorsports history. From Labor Day weekend 2010 through the 2011 season-opening richest-ever Pro All-Star Series race, the SAI team conducted six large and more than a dozen small successful events. In 2010 PASS and SAI executives announced "The Race", which guaranteed a minimum $75,000 to the winner. Approximately 80 drivers, including past Daytona 500 winners Sterling Marlin and Geoff Bodine, entered the event. Every region of the United States, as well as Canada, was represented in the history-making race.(more at historicnws.com and / or savethespeedway.net)(5-10-2011)



Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Business of NASCAR: Three tracks use banners to cover empty seats

Business of NASCAR: Three tracks use banners to cover empty seats


By Tripp Mickle
Special to the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(May 10, 2011)
NASCAR fans first saw banners covering seats at Auto Club Speedway in late March, they saw them again at Talladega Superspeedway in April, and they’ll see them for a third time this weekend at Dover.
The banners are the manifestation of a sport wrestling with attendance woes following the recent recession. Soft attendance for those Sprint Cup races compelled the three tracks to cover several thousand of their seats. Dover first covered seats four years ago. Auto Club and Talladega followed suit this year. The coverings amount to less than 10 percent of the track’s total capacity. As of now, no other tracks have plans to follow suit.
The tracks’ motivation was designed to reduce operational costs, tighten ticket supply and, in some cases, create inventory for new or existing sponsors. By eliminating a section of seating, they were able to cut the costs of ushers, security and cleaning services. They also could sell or give sponsors logo exposure on the banners that cover the seats as both Dover and Auto Club Speedway have done, respectively.
“It’s been a challenge to figure out ways to reduce expenses and keep the facilities as comfortable as possible without raising ticket prices,” said Gillian Zucker, Auto Club Speedway’s president. “If you’re not filling seats, you don’t have to staff that section. You can quickly recognize operational savings.”
The tracks preferred to cover the seats so that fans couldn’t move into the sections and didn’t have to look at an area of empty seats.
“The good thing about banners is you can put them up and when demand comes back you can take them down,” said Grant Lynch, Talladega’s chairman. “If you remove seats, you have to spend capital to put them back up.”
Only Dover has made a concerted effort to convert its coverings into revenue. It turned approximately 10,000 covered seats into the track’s largest billboards and began selling them to sponsors. The 12-by-20-foot coverings are visible on TV and were sold to Best Buy and Sunoco for a race weekend and were included in sales packages for title partners like Heluva Good.
Mark Rossi, Dover’s vice president of sales and marketing, compared the move to turning “lemons into lemonade,” adding, “I don’t want the grandstands to turn into signage. Any of us would rather have butts in seats.”
Rossi declined to say what advertisers paid to be featured on the banner, but implied it was less than the low- to mid-six figures the track would make by selling the tickets to several thousand paying customers who also likely would buy drinks, food and merchandise.
Auto Club Speedway’s approach to its banners for its March race underscored the speedway’s collective preference for selling tickets. The track initially planned to cover 9,000 seats at its March race and give its naming-rights partner, Auto Club, signage on the coverings. But Zucker said they decided not to tell Auto Club executives of those plans in case demand for the race rose and the track had to release more seats. Weeks before the race, ticket demand increased, and the track released additional tickets each time the number of tickets available in a section dropped to 100 tickets. As a result, it wound up covering approximately 4,000 seats, half of what it initially planned, and put Auto Club’s logo only on banners in the track’s first turn.
Talladega made a very different decision with its covered seats. Because it covered 12,000 seats in its upper towers out of TV camera view, the track decided to use the coverings to market the track’s legacy. It featured images of famous moments at the track for drivers Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr.
International Speedway Corp., which owns 12 tracks that host Sprint Cup races, developed the idea for covering seats and asked tracks if they were interested in participating. Daryl Wolfe, ISC’s chief marketer, said only Auto Club and Talladega have opted to put up banners. Talladega will have them up for its fall race, he said, but no other ISC tracks are expected to put them up this season.
“We hope it doesn’t last long,” Wolfe said. “Those seats are there for a reason. We want to sell them and we want to see demand back up to historical levels.”
Fans sometimes argue that rather than cover seats, tracks should just lower ticket prices, Rossi said, but tracks have already reduced ticket prices considerably and doing so doesn’t guarantee increased attendance. He’s optimistic that as the economy improves, Dover will be able to reduce the number of seats it covers.
“Our ultimate goal is to sell tickets,” Rossi said. “I don’t want people to lose sight of that.”
Tripp Mickle is a reporter with SportsBusiness Journal.


Charlotte Motor Speedway Applauds N.C. Senate Ruling To Establish Stock


Car Racing as the Official State Sport



CONCORD, N.C. (April 28, 2011) - The North Carolina Senate voted

yesterday to establish stock car racing as the "official state sport" by

a margin of 46-3 and as the largest motorsports facility in the state,

Charlotte Motor Speedway is celebrating the Senate's ruling.

"North Carolina is truly the world capital of motorsports and we

applaud the decision of the North Carolina Senate and its leadership to

establish stock car racing as the official state sport," said Marcus

Smith, president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"Motorsports in general, and more specifically Charlotte Motor

Speedway, has such an enormous impact on the state's economy. This

includes money generated through fan support, by motorsports facilities

and through permanent and seasonal jobs not just at the speedway, but at

the race teams and countless other motorsports-related organizations."

According to the latest economic impact study, Charlotte's

motorsports megaplex that includes the famed 1.5-mile superspeedway,

zMAX Dragway and the Dirt Track at Charlotte, brings in more than $400

million annually to the state's economy and will employ as many as 6,000

people during race events. Much of that impact will be felt in May

during the facility's two weeks of racing, highlighted by the NASCAR

Sprint All-Star Race on May 21 and the Coca-Cola 600 on May 29.

The state sport bill was brought to the North Carolina General

Assembly in February, 2011, by a group of fifth graders at Lake Norman

Elementary School in Mooresville, N.C. In proposing the legislation, the

students pointed to motorsports' $6 billion annual economic impact to

North Carolina and noted that Charlotte, N.C., and the surrounding

region is home to Charlotte Motor Speedway, the NASCAR Hall of Fame and

more than 90 percent of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock-car race

teams. More than 200 businesses in Cabarrus County support the

motorsports industry, which employs nearly 20,000 people in the region.

"We also applaud the efforts of these industrious students at

Mooresville Elementary and congratulate them on their hard work toward

getting this legislation through the government," Smith said.

The measure now moves on to the North Carolina House. If passed,

North Carolina will join other U.S. states with an official state sport,

including Alaska (dog mushing); Colorado (snowboarding and skiing);

Massachusetts (basketball); Minnesota (hockey); and South Dakota, Texas

and Wyoming (rodeo).

The two biggest weeks in all of sports kicks-off this May in

Charlotte with the NASCAR Rev'd Up Concert on May 18 with Gary Allan and

Josh Kelley at 4:00 p.m., at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Additional events

include:



- May 19 - NASCAR Pit Crew Challenge, 7:00 p.m., Time Warner Cable

Arena

- May 20 - NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race Qualifying/N.C. Education Lottery

200, 8:00 p.m., Charlotte Motor Speedway

- May 21 - Dierks Bentley Pre-Race Concert presented by Budweiser, 2:30

p.m., Charlotte Motor Speedway Infield

- May 21 - Pennzoil Ultra Victory Challenge, 6:20 p.m., Charlotte Motor

Speedway

- May 21 - Sprint Showdown, 7:45 p.m., Charlotte Motor Speedway

- May 21 - NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, 9:00 p.m., Charlotte Motor

Speedway

- May 23 - NASCAR Hall of Fame 2011 Induction Ceremony, 7:00 p.m.,

NASCAR Hall of Fame

- May 26 - Windstream Pole Night, 7:10 p.m., Charlotte Motor Speedway

- May 27 - Coca-Cola Family Cookout & Track Walk, Noon, Charlotte Motor

Speedway Infield

- May 27 - Circle K NOS Energy Outlaw Showdown, 7:15 p.m., The Dirt

Track at Charlotte

- May 28 - Top Gear 300, 2:30 p.m., Charlotte Motor Speedway

- May 29 - Coca-Cola 600, 6:00 p.m. Charlotte Motor Speedway



A full list of activities taking place in Charlotte during

Charlotte Motor Speedway's May race weeks is available at

www.charlottemotorspeedway.com/fans/fan_guide_to_fun/

Tickets for all May races at Charlotte Motor Speedway can be

purchased online at www.charlottemotorspeedway.com or by calling the

speedway ticket office at 1-800-455-FANS (3267). Frontstretch tickets

with the best views of the world's largest HD video board, debuting at

the speedway in May, start at just $49 for the NASCAR Sprint All-Star

Race on May 21. Fans can also purchase two frontstretch tickets for

just $99 to the Coca-Cola 600 on May 29.

For daily updates on May race activities, connect with Charlotte

Motor Speedway by following on Twitter at www.twitter.com/CLTMotorSpdwy

or become a Facebook fan at www.facebook.com/charlottemotorspeedway.

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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Darlington Raceway:

Darlington Raceway:


History

· Built as a 1.25-mile paved superspeedway in 1949-50, Darlington Raceway hosted the first 500-mile race in NASCAR history and the first on asphalt on Sept. 4, 1950.
· The track was re-measured to 1.375 miles in 1953.
· The track was re-configured to 1.366 miles following the spring race in 1970.
· The track was repaved in 1995.
· The 2005 race was the first Saturday night race at Darlington.
· The track was repaved again prior to the 2008 season.

Notebook

· There have been 107 NASCAR Sprint Cup races at Darlington Raceway since the track opened in 1950.
· There was one race per year in 1950, 1951, from 1953-1959, and again every year since 2005. Darlington held two races a season in all other years.
· Curtis Turner won the first pole, in 1950.
· Johnny Mantz won the first race, in 1950.
· 47 drivers have posted poles at Darlington.
· David Pearson leads all drivers with 12 poles at Darlington.
· 44 drivers have won races at Darlington; 25 drivers have won more than once there.
· David Pearson leads all drivers with 10 victories, followed by Dale Earnhardt with nine.
· Jeff Gordon is third overall and leads all active drivers, with seven victories.
· Hendrick Motorsports has won 13 races at Darlington, more than any other organization.
· 19 races at Darlington have been won from the pole, the most productive starting position.
· The deepest in the field that a race winner has started was 43rd, in the track’s inaugural race in 1950 by Johnny Mantz. That race had a 75-car field.
· Darlington is the site of one of the closest race finishes in NASCAR history. Ricky Craven edged Kurt Busch by 0.002 seconds on March 16, 2003 – which is tied with Talladega (April 17, 2011) as the closest margin of victory since NASCAR instituted electronic timing in 1993.

NASCAR in South Carolina
There have been 217 NASCAR Sprint Cup races in South Carolina.
133 NASCAR drivers (all-time) have their home state recorded as South Carolina.
There have been 11 race winners from South Carolina in NASCAR’s three national series: