NASCAR is returning May 17, but when will it come back to Texas Motor Speedway?
Texas Motor Speedway plans to host every race weekend this season, track president Eddie Gossage said.
The makeup date for the postponed spring race weekend is not known yet, but it won’t happen in May. And it’s not expected to run as part of a “doubleheader” this summer following the IndyCar’s Genesys 600 on June 6.
NASCAR announced plans to resume its season on May 17 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina without fans. That’s the first of seven scheduled races without fans, including four Cup races, between May 17-27 taking place at Darlington Raceway and Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Race dates beyond May 27 were not announced, but Gossage said it’s unlikely NASCAR comes to TMS for its June 5-7 race weekend. Instead, Gossage said, NASCAR seems focused on limiting travel and running races within closer proximity of most teams’ headquarters in the Charlotte area.
“As I listen in on these calls, my gut and my hunch is that we’re going to wind up being later in the year, probably not that first weekend of June,” Gossage said. “But I have been assured they’re going to be running here on two different weekends.”
Gossage paused, chuckled and said: “Well, let me qualify that — that’s assuming COVID-19 doesn’t explode and lock us all up. As conditions are today and if they don’t change for the worse, there are plans to run twice here with the fall race (Oct. 25) and one other Cup weekend probably later in the summer.”
Gossage made it clear, though, that NASCAR’s plan to have a makeup date later in the summer does not impact the summer race weekend for now.
TMS is still preparing to host its summer race weekend as scheduled with the IndyCar race on June 6. Gossage has not closed the door on fans attending the race, although he acknowledged “it’s less likely that will happen every day we get closer.”
TMS has 135,000 seats, and Gossage said the track would consider hosting with fans even if it is limited to 50% occupancy (67,500) or possibly 25% (33,750).
“We’ve talked about that,” Gossage said. “You could easily fit into any of those standards. We are large enough that we can have a substantial crowd and still have social distancing. But I’m not worried so much of those standards as I am generally of doing the right thing. We’ll have a decision to make at some point.”
At the end of the day, Gossage is excited to see NASCAR resuming its season. There will be four Cup races run in an 11-day period (May 17 and May 20 at Darlington; and May 24 and May 27 at Charlotte).
“The upside for NASCAR doing this is it’ll be great television,” Gossage said. “We’re all sitting here wearing out Netflix and Amazon Prime, but this will be just really good competition that’s really good for the sport. This is exciting to me.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 3:46 PM.
