NASCAR Home Tracks
Drivers, Start Your Engines
2010 NASCAR Whelen All-American Season Opens In Five StatesFive NASCAR Whelen All-American Series tracks in five states open for the 2010 season this weekend. Three of four are known as historic NASCAR Home Tracks which have operated for a combined total of 162 seasons. The fourth brings NASCAR racing to its state for the first time.
Tracks opening Saturday, March 13 include South Boston (Va.) Speedway, Greenville (S.C.) Pickens Speedway, and Outlaw Motor Speedway in Muskogee, Okla.
Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., opens with a two-day show with practice and qualifying on Saturday and feature events on Sunday, March 14. The New Stockton (Calif.) 99 Speedway opens with its three-day Spring Classic event which culminates with feature events on Sunday, March 14.
VIEW 2010 NASCAR WHELEN ALL-AMERICAN SERIES MEDIA GUIDE
Here are the details:
SOUTH BOSTON SPEEDWAY
South Boston, a .400-mile paved oval, is a showcase facility 60 miles east of Martinsville, Va. It opens Saturday afternoon with a 2 p.m. ET race time. The NASCAR Feature Division, Late Models, will compete in twin 75-lap feature events. Also in competition will be Limited Sportsman, Budweiser Pure Stocks and Southern Vintage Modifieds. Justin Johnson won the track’s 2009 NASCAR Late Model division championship by seven points over David Quackenbush.
South Boston opened as a quarter-mile dirt track in August 1957 and became NASCAR-sanctioned in 1960. It was enlarged to .357-miles and paved in 1962, and expanded to a .400-mile banked paved oval in 1994. Led by Joe Mattioli III, the facility became a holding of Pocono (Pa.) Raceway’s Mattioli family in 2000.
The track hosted 10 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races between 1960 and 1971, and Richard Petty scored five of his 200 career wins there. The NASCAR Nationwide Series appeared regularly at South Boston in 35 events between 1982 and 2000. Tommy Ellis is the division’s all-time leading South Boston winner with seven. It also hosted the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series three times between 2001 and 2003. It will host a doubleheader on April 3 for the NASCAR K&N Pro Series and NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour.
South Boston was the home track for driver Peyton Sellers of Danville, Va., when he won the 2005 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship.
The most recent NASCAR national series star to call South Boston home is Timothy Peters, who won the 2010 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season opener at Daytona. The track also launched the career of 2005 Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton, who now fields a car for his son, Jeb, at South Boston. Ward’s brother, Jeff Burton, Elliott Sadler and Stacey Compton all began their careers in the Late Model division at the track. Geoff Bodine, the 1986 Daytona 500 winner, won the South Boston Speedway NASCAR Late Model Sportsman division track championship in 1981.
South Boston is also the site of the 2010 NASCAR Home Tracks television commercial now playing during NASCAR race telecasts.
GREENVILLE-PICKENS SPEEDWAY
Greenville Pickens, a half-mile paved oval, opens for its 65th season Saturday evening with an 8 p.m. race time. The fairgrounds track is owned by Kevin Whitaker and managed by Tom Blackwell. Saturday’s events are headlined by twin 50-lap features for Late Models. Sharing the track will be the Charger, Sportsman, Renegade and Pure Stock divisions.
Among luminaries who have won Greenville-Pickens track championships are home-stater David Pearson in 1959 and Ralph Earnhardt in 1965-66. Dexter Canipe, of Claremont, N.C., won the 1997 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship racing at Greenville-Pickens. Roger Powell is the track’s defending NASCAR Late Model division champion.
Greenville Pickens was constructed as a .500-mile dirt track in 1940, but it was NASCAR pioneer Bill France Sr. who promoted the first stock car race at the track on July 4, 1946, two years before he founded NASCAR.
The nearly flat oval was paved in 1970 and was the site of the first live nationally broadcast flag-to-flag NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event on ABC’s Wide World of Sports in 1971.
The track hosted 29 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events between 1951 and 1971 and Richard Petty was the series leading winner there with six. It also hosted a pair of NASCAR Nationwide Series events in 1983, two NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour events 2006-07 and four NASCAR Convertible Division races 1956-1959.
The track has hosted the season-opening event for the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East since 2006, and the 2010 edition of the event is scheduled for Saturday, March 27.
Blair Addis, Greenville Pickens Speedway’s 2005 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Late Model division champion, now oversees six Late Model teams for Revolution Racing in the NASCAR-supported Drive for Diversity initiative.
OUTLAW MOTOR SPEEDWAY
NASCAR-sanctioned racing enters Oklahoma for the first time in its history with the addition of Outlaw just south of Muskogee, which opens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. CT.
The .375-mile clay oval’s regular race night is Friday, but hosts its season-opening Spring Champion race this Saturday.
The NASCAR featured division at Outlaw is the Modified division, while the 360 Modifieds, Factory Stocks and Pure Stocks will accumulate points in the NASCAR Finalist program. The track’s 2009 champions include Joe Duvall, Modifieds; Kevin Flock, Hobby Stocks; Patrick Goodnight, 360 Modifieds;
Ronnie Palmer, Four Wheel Drive Factory Stocks; and Kyle Slader, Pure Stocks.
“We’re proud to partner with NASCAR to be the first and only NASCAR-sanctioned track in the state,” said Lynn Skinner, who operates the eight-year-old track with Danny Womack and facility manager Eric Shannon. “We’re proactive in our promotion of the track and this is another step in our growth.”
CARAWAY SPEEDWAY
In North Carolina, a star-making paved track doubles its presence in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series in 2010.
Caraway, a .455-mile paved oval in Asheboro, N.C., has added a weekly Friday night NASCAR-sanctioned racing program for the new season. The addition enhances the track’s longtime weekly Saturday night racing program.
“We’ve been hosting races two nights a week since 1999 and we’ve been kicking around the idea of sanctioning our Friday night events for several years,” track operator Russell Hackett said. “It’s time for our Friday guys to get more recognition and be eligible for their own NASCAR point fund.”
The Sportsman division will be Caraway’s Friday night featured division. Joining them will be the Late Model Super Trucks, Street Stocks and Mini Stocks. Saturday night’s fare includes NASCAR Late Model Stock Cars, Limited Sportsman, Super Mini Trucks and Pure Stocks. Race time each night is 8 p.m.
Caraway Speedway opened as a dirt track in 1966 and was paved in 1972 when the Hackett family took over the operation. It has been part of the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series since 1994. Graduates of NASCAR weekly racing at Caraway include track champion drivers such as NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series champion Bobby Labonte, 18-time NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race winner Dennis Setzer, and 1995 truck series champion Mike Skinner. Three-time Late Model division track champion Travis Swaim also won the 2009 NASCAR North Carolina state championship.
NEW STOCKTON 99 SPEEDWAY
On the West Coast, Stockton opens with a three-day, $50,000 Spring Classic extravaganza March 12-14.
Sunday, March 14, the main events for the Western Late Models (100 laps), Grand American Modifeds (60 laps), Street Stocks (60 laps) and Bombers (50 laps) are scheduled. Those four divisions will qualify and run heat races on Saturday, March 13, along with features for the Four Cylinders, Mini Stocks/Trucks, Baby Grands and Mini Cup. Friday is a practice day for all divisions.
Stockton 99 Speedway opened as a .250-mile dirt track in 1947, and was then paved in 1950. The track remained active until it closed at the end of the 2006 season. The track shuttered when the property was scheduled for redevelopment. When those plans failed, the facility was left to decay.
Former car owner Tony Noceti and his wife, Carol, negotiated a five-year lease with an option to purchase from owners Bob Hunefeld and Ken Clapp and reopened the track in 2009. In 1954, the Stockton track was the first track west of the Mississippi to become NASCAR-sanctioned, and renewing that relationship with NASCAR last year was a natural part of the reopening process.
The Nocetis have since rebuilt, repaired and repaved the track’s original 1950 surface.
Justin Philpott won the 2009 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Western Late Model division championship, while Jacob Gomes, who also raced at All-American Speedway in Roseville and Madera Speedway, won the 2009 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national Rookie of the Year Award presented by Josten’s.
MORE IN MARCH
Three more NASCAR Whelen All-American Series track openings are scheduled across the nation throughout the month:
• March 20: The Bullring at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway; Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway;
• March 27: Toyota Speedway at Irwindale (Calif.).
Houston (Tex.) Motorsports Park was the earliest NASCAR Whelen All-American Series track to open in 2010. The second-year NASCAR-sanctioned track opened with the Fiesta 50 for NASCAR Fiesta Late Models on February 27. Larry Schild III won the event. The track returns to operation Saturday, March 13 with the fourth annual Fiesta’s Speedfest presented by Cricket Wireless.
Participants at NASCAR Whelen All-American Series tracks are part of NASCAR’s North American network of hometown speedways across the United States and Canada. At each track, the featured division participants will be eligible to compete for track and state championships, points funds and ultimately the series’ national title.
State or provincial champions are determined by drivers’ highest 18 finishes at NASCAR-sanctioned tracks within a state.
NASCAR-licensed drivers in selected support divisions at NASCAR Whelen All-American Series tracks also accumulate NASCAR points in the NASCAR Finalist program. The top 100 drivers in each of eight groups will be designated as a NASCAR Finalist at the conclusion of the season. A driver’s best 14 finishes will be counted toward their final NASCAR points total. Points will be kept separately for dirt and asphalt tracks.
