The death knell for big-time racing at the track sounded Friday when Brian France declared during a press conference announcing the 2005 schedule that “the North Carolina Speedway will no longer, regrettably, be on the schedule.”
With that announcement, it became reality that Nextel Cup racing has pulled behind the wall, loaded up the hauler and is heading out of town.
Rumors and speculation have been ripe that the track would lose its last remaining race. Last year, the track, which had held two NASCAR races since 1966, lost one of its dates to California. Now, the remaining date has gone to Texas Motor Speedway.
“No one here is really surprised,” Kristi King, the track’s director of public relations, said Friday. “We’re disappointed, but no one is really surprised. After the many months of rumors, we knew this was coming.”
With the loss of the race, it is claimed that the region will take a $25 million hit in lost revenue, with an estimated $4 million of that being drained from Moore County coffers.
“We have to be pragmatic and realistic,” said Caleb Miles, president and CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Moore County. “We need to develop other ideas to bring visitors to the area. You don’t slow down. It’s a lot like NASCAR, there is a lot of jockeying, other things going on that we can look at.”
What NASCAR was jockeying for was a way to settle a lawsuit filed in Texas by a stockholder in Speedway Motorsports, the owner of the Texas track. The stockholder said that NASCAR had promised the Texas track a second date for racing, but had not provided that date.
Before going to court, NASCAR and its parent company International Speedway Corp. reached a settlement that had Speedway Motorsports buying the ISC-owned North Carolina Speedway for $100.4 million. It also awarded a second date to the Texas track, leaving the area speedway without a race.
France, NASCAR chairman and CEO, said during the televised press conference held in Richmond, Va., that the settlement was a “solution that was in the best interest of everybody in the sport.”
The solution also left the 11 full-time employees at the area track in a sense of limbo.
King said that ISC had talked to all the employees on individual basis to see if there were opportunities in other areas of the company.
It was reported that SMI didn’t plan to retain any of the employees, but a press release did say options for the track were being studied.
In the past few weeks, the track has been used during the filming of a movie on Dale Earnhardt, and there are three driving schools that use the facilities.
Miles said that it would appear to be in the best interest of the owners to have the track keep generating a revenue stream with other kind of events, perhaps not just exclusively NASCAR events.
“We are still hopeful (the track) will generate something,” Miles said. “We’ll be meeting with some folks in Richmond County and Moore County to get more information and go from there.”
Darlington Raceway also took a blow when the schedule was announced. The sport’s oldest superspeedway will only have one race next season.
That means in the last two years, the Carolinas have lost three of the six races they used to hold.
Charlotte Motor Speedway, owned by SMI, will still have two races next season.
