Even though a growing throng of NASCAR drivers and fans would love nothing more than to see the good ol’ boys hop right back on the quirky oval at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina, the track won’t jump back on the schedule for a while, if ever.
With no fanfare, the 2019 Cup schedule came out this week — seven full weeks earlier than last year. It did not include a race at North Wilkesboro or Iowa or Nashville or any other cool short track. Actually, there were no changes at all. Those waiting for NASCAR to spice up its schedule will just have to wait another year. Zzzz.
This does not mean the Save the Speedway, the group that wants to help preserve the stock-car track at North Wilkesboro that was built in 1946 and played host to NASCAR races through 1996, is packing it in. The facility is falling apart, but it is still there.
“We are always optimistic something could happen with the track,” Steven Wilson, a web designer who is a spokesman for the group, told me this week. “As always, we engage with various interests both inside Wilkes County and outside.”
The track is owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc. (SMI), the racing empire run by Bruton Smith. North Wilkesboro was already obsolete when it lost its two Winston Cup dates to Smith’s gleaming new track in Fort Worth and to the 1-mile track in Loudon, N.H.
North Wilkesboro opened from 2009 to 2011 when promoters leased the track from SMI, spruced up the facility and ran some lower-level races (one won in 2010 by 14-year-old Chase Elliott). But it has been shut down since. The place is basically crumbling to the earth, but the track is still there.
It is not as if SMI is sitting on property that could become, say, a housing development or an office park.
“First, and most importantly, the owners have never seemed interested in this,” Wilson said of redevelopment. “Further, Wilkes County is an economically depressed area. In recent years with not only the track closure, but Lowe’s, which had been founded in the county, is now moving many of it operations south to Mooresville.”
In addition to farming, the local furniture and glass industries have seen downturns, he said. Whoever would buy the property for millions would also have to make substantial renovations to — or more likely the replacement of — buildings and grandstands. More millions.
Imagine a North Wilkesboro Speedway, rebuilt with new seats and facilities, that would also play host to what Wilson said could be “non-motorsports events such as concerts, camping and infrastructure for many county programs, filming opportunities and local program support of educational opportunities to learn trades with the local community college.”
The .625-mile track, which has an uphill backstretch and downhill frontstretch — would offer a throwback to the kind of door-ro-door racing that made NASCAR such a colorful spectacle. The racetrack was built where it was because moonshiners lived in the area and wanted a place to race their souped-up cars.
North Wilkesboro could become kind of like the stock-car version of Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. But Smith and others have said a makeover would not make much business sense. The track, for one thing, is 55 miles west of the nearest big city, Winston-Salem.
And it is a .625-mile track. At the peak of the track’s popularity, North Wilkesboro drew about 60,000 to Winston Cup races. Smith bought the track, in part, because he could move the race date to his giant track in Fort Worth, which drew up to 191,000 in 2007.
But seats have been removed there, too, as crowds have dwindled. Besides, the racing on short tracks, almost everyone seems to agree, is better than at a 1½-mile tri-oval like Texas. A funky track like North Wilkesboro could provide a link from NASCAR’s past to its future.
But it would be really expensive, even for Smith. So Martinsville and Bristol will have to do. And that is why a group like Save the Speedway is still around, even though it is just doing business as usual for NASCAR.
