Atlanta pushes for future Labor Day night race
Quote selected text Published March 12th, 2008 in NASCAR News
Get ready for Atlanta Motor Speedway to have night Sprint Cup races – or at least AMS officials want you to get ready for night races.
If Atlanta gets the Labor Day weekend race, the plan would be to run it on Saturday or Sunday night, Speedway Motorsports President H.A.“Humpy” Wheeler told financial analysts Wednesday.
“What we really want to do is try to run Atlanta at night,” Wheeler said. “We have lights down there. Everything changes at night.
“Going to Labor Day weekend, it’s a big holiday. We get a day to get people back. We could run it on Sunday night, which is a big TV night, or Saturday night. It doesn’t matter. It would make all the difference in the world.”
SMI is pushing for Atlanta and International Speedway Corp.’s Auto Club Speedway in California to swap their second dates, with California getting a date in late October, while Atlanta would get the Labor Day weekend race.
“It would help the track at Fontana also, being in October, it is a little bit better weather for them,” Wheeler said. “We continue to talk to
ISC and NASCAR about this. Obviously, NASCAR doesn’t want rainouts, they don’t want bad dates.”
And, if SMI had its way, it would run a night race at Atlanta in early June instead of a day race in mid-March.
“The big question if that [swap] is done is what do we do in March?” Wheeler said. “We probably would rather run that March date in early June when we could run it at night again.
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That would work…just as long as we get don’t lose our 2nd race here in California.
luv it! i wish they would run them all at night!
Don’t let Humpy distract you from what is really going on here. Fontana is hurting and they’re looking for any way to save it.
“It would help the track at Fontana also, being in October, it is a little bit better weather for them.” So, they never brought this into consideration before they castrated the Labor Day race from Darlington? It must be really embarassing for NASCAR to have dropped their most historic race date and track for a complete sham. The seats must have been empty because everyone was at home watching the Oscars.
Let’s face it, Fontana was made for open-wheel cars not stock cars. Give that date back to Darlington. NASCAR can start with the reparations to the loyal fans right there. Bring back the Labor Day Darlington race. The Southern 500 is what I want to see.
If swapping the dates doesnt work you can look for that race to go elsewhere but i hope for the fans in that area that it does workout.
well Oct would be cooler here in Ca, but it will be bad for us in the west coast if they dont give us another date to replace Labor Day. We love our night race and want to keep it… At least the people that go to the race do
Peace out and GO JR!!!!!!!!!
How about this GET RID OF A FEW NIGHT RACES, DON’T MOVE THEM.
Night racing used to be a special thing, now its almost a weekly thing. Not to mention that Holding night races on Saturday kills short track racing because all the fans stay home and watch the race on tv, instead of going to support the real racing on the local short track.
[steps off soapbox] l0l
Labor day in the south is a WINNER! He owns both tracks so that cali would still have a race.
1. Fontana is in the south
l0l
2. SMI owns Atlanta, ISC owns California, they got it from Roger Penske years back.
Fisha695 wrote:
You are correct about the tracks my bad!
fontana is in the south.
Hotlanta is in THA SOUTH. And we luv labor day weekend!!!!
l0l yeah every now and then I get them confused too… Cali just seems like a SMI track for some reason.
lol, The South stops where the prairie starts if you’re heading westward. Eventhough Cali isn’t in the South it’s still my second favorite state.
California unfortunately houses my least favorite track in its Southern portion (Fontana) but also a really good one a bit further North (Sonoma). Too bad Riverside isn’t still around too, that would pick up some of the slack.
They may not race NASCAR there but you can’t forget Laguna Seca too. (I wish they would alternate every other year between Sears Point and Laguna Seca)
heres an idea, move it to………….DARLINGTON where it belongs!! and cut Cali. all together
Brent wrote:
Hey Brent
Enough with the DARLINGTON, that is getting way too old. There are fans here that love NASCAR too!!
Stop all this crap and give it back to Darlington. End of story.
There are 4 cup races within 100 miles of Darlington, they don’t need a 5th. How about they take the All-star race and take it to Darlington? Afterall it seems like it be a better track for the all-star race then a real points paying race, it just has that Special event feel to the track.
Just froze my A__ off in Atlanta last weekend. Typical of March and Oct races there. We had rain,wind and snow during the race weekend. I’m all for getting the labor day weekend night race and if that causes the March date to move to June…BONUS. Weather is usually terrible for both race weekends.
Yes, it does have a special event feel when they’re at Darlington, but it shouldn’t just be a side show in my opinion. It shouldn’t be left behind, it deserves more. In my opinion NASCAR shouldn’t even set foot on the track at Fontana, I think that track is going to be a dead end. It’s horrible racing every time.
Laguna Seca would be completely awesome.
The grandstands didn’t look full at last weeks race. Was it weather related, was it something else or a combination of things? I see Rick froze his butt off. I was there for that snow storm in the early 1990’s and I believe Morgan Shepard won it in the Wood Brothers car when it was finally run. One of the last wins for him and the Brothers. You should sell out your first date regularly to get a second date. Darlington was NASCAR’s first super speedway and should get that second date back. I’ll admit I like those older tracks and they still have a place in the sport. Especially after places like California don’t live up to expectations.
I would love to see Atlanta’s races move, night races there would be awesome! If NASCAR ran at another track
in California other than Fontana for Fontana’s dates I’d be all for it as long as the racing is good(Laguna Seca
comes to mind but I don’t know how those 3400lbs stock cars would handle that corkscrew)
The problem with Fontana is it has some of the most boring spread out racing i’ve ever seen, that alone should be
a sign to not race there, but say they changed tracks for fontana’s dates in california to another track that
had some good racing i’d be all for it.
IMO the weather is a factor with attendance at Atlanta. I’ve been attending the Atlanta races for about 6 yrs now and hold season tickets to both race weekends. I have srtongly considered giving up both events due to weather. It seems you can almost always count on rain during both event weekends. The racing on the track could be better. Cars can get spread out, but it is a very fast track with alot of racing room. Track facilities are very good with good camping spots available, although reserved RV spot in Atlanta is $150 vs $80 at Dega. Neither obviously have no water/sewer connections at that price.
I’d like to see Darlington get their traditional Labor Day race date back, but I would also like to attend an Atlanta race when the weather is not so predictibly miserable….had to use a can coozi Sat. so my hand wouldn’t freeze to the can!
NASCAR in California wrote:
To bad Darlington was a tradition for YEARS before California ever came into NASCAR.
gigolo george wrote:
I don’t think Atlanta has sold out in a long time. Heck when that tornado came through and knocked down some of the grandstands, they didn’t even rebuild them all because they couldn’t fill them up.
“…when that tornado came through and knocked down some of the grandstands, they didn’t even rebuild them all because they couldn’t fill them up.”
Slander Alert.
It wasn’t the grandstands…
Axel Foley wrote:
Yeah it was, back stretch grandstands
No. AMS removed the Weaver Grandstands(back stretch). They have been replaced with reserve RV parking. Tickets for Weaver were about $35-40 and the RV parking in in the neighborhood of $3400 per weekend and for that you get full hook up and 10 tickets. No, I don’t park there. I’m over at the $150 lot, but there were alot of RV’s parked on the back stretch. Willing to bet that Bruton in taking in as much from RV spots on the back stretch as the grandstands were bringing in.
Bruton kept the money from the insurance company anyway. After all, it was his to keep.
Most of the damage was front stretch and media center. That was all rebuilt with improvements. Club One and Winners chairback seating section.