Who's Next?

From adding tracks in large markets to reaching unprecedented numbers of television viewers, NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series has undergone profound growth and change since 1996. Six new tracks have been added to the schedule since then, and one old track has fallen by the wayside.

When NASCAR is looked at in terms of continued growth and expansion, obvious questions hover over the sport like dust over a dirt-track race. What other racetracks, if any, will follow North Wilkesboro (North Carolina) Speedway into obscurity? Will another track have to pay the price for NASCAR’s continued growth?

The situation poses a dilemma for NASCAR’s hierarchy.

“I tell you what, (NASCAR’s) Mike Helton and George Pyne and Kevin Triplett, those guys have the toughest job in motorsports,” says Darlington Raceway President Andrew Gurtis. “We all, when we look at the schedule, kind of shake our heads and think how can it expand, how can you accommodate all the things that are on NASCAR’s plate to accommodate, which includes the big markets that NASCAR wants to get into as we take our place in the national spotlight.”

Winds Of Change

When a track loses a race date or dates, rest assured the occurrence, like the passing of North Wilkesboro Speedway, will be significant in terms of what it means to stock car racing.

The date of the final race at North Wilkesboro Speedway, in fact, marks more than just the day an old warhorse of a racetrack took its last breath. A look at the circumstances before and since that day tells us September 29, 1996, can be considered a turning point for all of stock car racing.

Jeff Gordon, then a 25-year-old hotshot with a Winston Cup championship already under his belt, won the last race at North Wilkesboro, held on a Sunday five years ago. His victory that day on the 5/8-mile layout was his third straight, following wins at Dover and Martinsville, and his fourth in five races.

Gordon—with his GQ looks, beautiful young wife and Boy Scout image—was cut from a cloth different from the mostly Southern men who had dominated the sport. Although he lost the overall Winston Cup title to teammate Terry Labonte that year, Gordon’s 10 victories in ’96 served notice that the sport was indeed changing.

By the time the Winston Cup tour rolled into North Wilkesboro the previous spring, in April of ’96, the whispers had already begun. One of the track’s co-owners, Enoch Staley, had died in May of ’95, meaning the track had lost its leader, its heart and soul and its direct connection to NASCAR’s roots.

Rumors—correctly it turned out—had the track losing one or both of its two race dates.

The rumble within NASCAR wasn’t simply the roar of race engines; it was the sound of change that had just started to really shake Winston Cup racing.

In With The New

Spurred by what was happening to the sport, the national media was beginning to focus increased attention on NASCAR in ’95, with cover stories in Forbes and Sports Illustrated. And for the first time ever, attendance for Winston Cup races broke the 5 million mark, while television ratings for NASCAR established records. Then in ’96, NASCAR opened an office in New York City to arrange marketing and sponsorship deals.

Big-time stock car racing was on the move. North Wilkesboro Speedway, meanwhile, was inching closer toward its final battle.

Between the time Staley died in May of ’95 and the day of the final race in September of ’96, North Wilkesboro Speedway changed ownership, with New Hampshire International Speedway owner Bob Bahre and Speedway Motorsports Chairman Bruton Smith each obtaining 50 percent interest in the 5/8-mile track.

The new owners, who reportedly paid the track’s two previous owners a total of $14 million for the speedway, wanted not the track itself but something more valuable—its dates on the Winston Cup schedule. Bahre subsequently moved one of the dates to his New Hampshire track, which had operated with just one Cup race since joining the tour in ’93, and Smith moved the other date to his new Texas Motor Speedway.

Expansion continued in ’97 as the sport returned to Southern California, with Fontana’s California Speedway joining Smith’s Texas Motor Speedway, located in Fort Worth, as NASCAR’s newest venues.

Since North Wilkesboro Speedway fell from the tour, expansion into new and larger markets has defined NASCAR. Las Vegas in ’98 ... Miami-Homestead in ’99 ... Chicago and Kansas City this year.

From ’96 through this season, the Winston Cup schedule has grown from 33 events to 38 (including non-point events), from 18 tracks to 23 and from serving 15 states to serving 19.

Attendance, after a 15.7-percent spike in the season after losing North Wilkesboro and adding Texas, California and another New Hampshire date to the schedule, has grown steadily, from 3.4 million spectators in ’96 to 4.6 million last season. Combine that with this season’s new television package with FOX and NBC, a deal that has consistently increased viewership over last season, and it’s clear the sport has been on an upward trend.

Watching, Waiting

Sacrifice invariably follows growth, however, and sacrifice stands lurking in the shadows of other old racetracks on the Winston Cup schedule.

In the realm of corporate growth and expansion, it’s not a complicated issue: As NASCAR stands bursting at its seams, weak threads—ties to the sport’s roots, in some cases—will have to be sacrificed. Common sense says the sport can only accommodate so many race dates, so many weekends where crewmen who are already overworked are away from home, which is just one of many areas affected when the Winston Cup schedule is expanded.

Expansion goes beyond overworked crewmen, though. The cry surrounding NASCAR in recent years has been for the sanctioning body to expand even further from its Southern roots. Too many races serve the same markets, experts say, particularly in the Southeast.

That was the gist of an analysis released this spring by investment bank Bear Stearns. In a 78-page report, the company expressed concern about the saturation of Winston Cup events in seven Southeastern states—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia—where 22 of the 38 events on the Winston Cup schedule are held.

Bear Stearns was also concerned with the industry’s ability to grow revenues outside of NASCAR’s new television package in the near future. The report stated: “In our view, track owners have limited ticket-pricing leverage due to already-high prices and an apparent slowing of demand, which should continue to constrain seating expansion.”

If, indeed, revenues can’t grow by increasing the price of tickets or expansion of seating at existing tracks, other areas, such as moving race dates, must be explored. The report stated that of the few tracks that don’t consistently sell out for races each year most—namely, Rockingham, Darlington and Atlanta—are in the Southeast, indicating an oversupply of races in that area.

“In the years ahead, the most obvious solution, in our view, would be to move races from Southeastern tracks that have two per season to tracks in the less concentrated western region of the United States,” the Bear Stearns report states.

Another argument, of course, reasons that the same market saturation exists in the Northeast, where Pocono, New Hampshire and Dover each host two events, with Watkins Glen hosting one event. If Michigan is entered into the equation, that’s nine events within roughly a day’s drive of one another.

Tracks in Rockingham (North Carolina), Darlington (South Carolina) and Martinsville (Virginia), meanwhile, serve essentially the same Carolinas-Virginia market. Factor in Charlotte, Richmond, and Bristol (Tennessee), tracks with seemingly secure dates, and market saturation becomes an even larger issue, especially considering that those five tracks, with 10 events, are a half-day’s drive apart, at most.

Darlington Raceway and North Carolina Speedway (Rockingham) appear most vulnerable to being sacrificed in the name of expansion.

Darlington, in particular, is an antiquated facility, one largely untouched by the wave of upgrades that have swept over other NASCAR tracks, save for flip-flopping the backstretch and frontstretch a few years ago and adding an updated garage area and media center. Plus, Darlington, with a seating capacity of 60,000, is one of the smallest facilities on the circuit.

Tradition is the tie that binds Darlington to the Winston Cup schedule, but at some point even tradition (as with North Wilkesboro Speedway) has to be pushed aside for the sake of growth.

“Certainly Darlington Raceway occupies a great spot in the tradition of NASCAR, dating back to 1950 when they held the first events here,” Gurtis says. “That’s what I’m going to hang my hat on as far as keeping our two dates going forward.”

Rockingham, likewise, has its shortcomings when compared to the modern, plush tracks that are becoming increasingly common. Like Darlington, Rockingham seats 60,000, is in an area with limited cultural amenities and hotel rooms and the track typically doesn’t sell out.

Compounding the issue is talk of NASCAR’s desire to expand into Denver and somewhere in or around New York City. Those markets would seemingly pull an existing race date from the pool.

The key to remaining on the schedule, according to Clay Campbell, president and general manager of Martinsville Speedway, is to keep pace with the sport’s growth.

“As long as tracks keep up, that’s really been the only thing that’s been requested of us,” says Campbell, who has added suites, a modern garage area and most recently a pedestrian tunnel at Martinsville. “You keep up with the times. As long as you can play the game, then you’re in.”

No Sign Of Life

While several tracks have fallen from the Winston Cup schedule in the past two decades, the plight of no single track holds as pivotal a spot in the annals of the sport as North Wilkesboro Speedway, which had been a part of NASCAR from the sanctioning body’s earliest days.

What culminated on that day in 1996 was a watershed event for the sport, foreshadowing the market growth and the unprecedented media coverage that now exists. By allowing North Wilkesboro to slip from the schedule, the sanctioning body gave notice that tradition would not be honored at the expense of expansion into the “new” world of NASCAR.

Indeed, NASCAR found itself at a crossroads in the mid-’90s. It was forced to begin moving away from its rural beginnings, and the stock car racing world subsequently left North Wilkesboro Speedway in its wake.

Today, the track sits idle, having been lifeless since the days following Gordon’s final win there. In the ensuing years, a storm has damaged some of the buildings on the speedway property, including the near destruction of an old metal building outside Turn 4 used for a local fair. A storm blew off the roof of a restroom overlooking the third turn. Now, the restroom’s four cinder-block walls are no more than a perch for birds. One block wall that helped form part of the track’s main pedestrian gate has partly fallen over, supported by boards that prevent a complete collapse.

Remnants of the track’s former life are intact, though crumbling somewhat, with cracking and peeling paint, cracking asphalt, and buildings falling into disrepair. The electronic scoreboard on the track’s infield, the metal and concrete bleachers that encircle three sides of the facility, small office buildings used for ticket sales and for picking up media credentials and a rickety old set of stadium-type bleachers with wooden boards for seats—the Junior Johnson Grandstand, no less—remain. The track’s gates are padlocked, protecting a ribbon of asphalt caught in a time warp that neither respects its past nor cares for its future.

In the meantime, NASCAR races to its future in Las Vegas, in Chicago, in Fort Worth, in Kansas City, in all the other places where stock car racing can grow and expand and, someday, somewhere, face another crossroads, another turning point in its history when another track will be sacrificed.

The challenge for certain tracks is to avoid the expansion monster, a task that grows tougher and tougher each year.

“It’s more difficult now than it used to be, because fans’ expectations and drivers’ expectations are higher than they used to be,” says Campbell. “But, as long as you can meet those expectations, you should be OK.”