Atlanta, California hope swap pays dividends in 2009
Atlanta Motor Speedway won’t be able to recreate the traditional Southern 500 that NASCAR abandoned five years ago, but AMS President Ed Clark hopes that the event can be reinvigorated at his track in the roots of the Southeast.
NASCAR announced Tuesday that the Labor Day race, a tradition at Darlington Raceway that ended in 2004 when that event was moved to the California track now known as Auto Club Speedway starting in 2004, will move to Atlanta beginning in 2009.
It will be a Sunday night race at Atlanta, while California takes Talladega’s October date and Talladega moves to Atlanta’s date as the
seventh race of the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup.
“We certainly don’t think we’re going to replace Darlington, but what we’ve done is given Southeastern fans an opportunity to have an event back in the Southeast at a long-time NASCAR speedway,” Clark said Tuesday. “We’ll be celebrating our 50th year of racing next year. This event certainly will be the keystone event of that celebration.”
Clark hopes to work with other attractions in the Atlanta area to make it a more attractive event for fans.
“It offers a lot of opportunities to people to maybe expand their attendance – there are a lot of attractions and things in and around the Atlanta area that they may enjoy as well as the race,” Clark said.
“We’re going to call on those partners to help us build this weekend [and] make it really, really special. … We’re going to add the element of night racing, which makes the cars even as fast as they are at Atlanta seem even faster and just really make this a special weekend that becomes a tradition in itself very much like Darlington has been for so many years.”
Clark also hopes it attracts more fans to his facility since it will not conflict with college football and there also is more time between his fall event and the one at nearby Talladega.
Gillian Zucker, president of the track in California, also hopes the change boosts attendance. She asked for the change not only to get into the Chase but also to get away from the extreme heat that has plagued the event. The track had sold out when it had one race a season but hasn’t in the last five years when it has had two.
“I’ve watched fans come to this sport, I’ve watched them brave the elements of unfathomable heat on Labor Day and rain-delayed events during February,” Zucker said. “They continue to come back. They’re passionate about writing and telling us what they want.
“We’re really about growth. As long as we’re continuing to see that, then we believe we’re making the kind of impact we need to be making for the sport. We feel that … during the Chase we’ll be seeing that [in 2009].”
Helton said NASCAR did not consider going back to Darlington for Labor Day weekend.
“The ’09 schedule that you see [is] a result of realignment, and the realignment is a result of requests that came from Atlanta and Auto Club Speedway that initiated the chain reaction of everything [on the schedule],” Helton said. “Labor Day is a national holiday across the entire country and I think it’s significant because it … signifies, wherever you might be, the end of summer as much as anything else.
“But the result was a collaboration of Auto Club Speedway and Atlanta so Darlington never was a factor in this conversation.”
There were no real hurdles to make the changes, Helton said.
“I wouldn’t say that there were any heartburns or negative issues to it,” Helton said. “It was a matter of, 'Does it make sense? Does it work? Do both facilities agree with it? And then ultimately does NASCAR agree with it?'”
NASCAR also announced that it would replace its Mexico City date with a race at Iowa Speedway on its Nationwide Series schedule and move an Atlanta Motor Speedway truck race to Chicagoland Speedway.
It will be the first national touring series race at Iowa Speedway, a 0.875-mile track that opened two years ago.
“We have some experience there with the Grand National divisions racing there,” Helton said. “The competitors that had been there speak very highly of it. We went by to look at the and there’s no question that the facility is first rate.
“It’s in the heartland of America and our series sponsor Nationwide has a great presence in Des Moines and that area. And Iowa has always been a very strong motorsports community across the board.”
The big winner besides Iowa on the Nationwide schedule could be Montreal, whose race will come during a Sprint Cup off weekend in August.
“It really worked out just because the calendar for ’09 worked out that way,” Helton said as there is an extra off weekend for each series because of the way the calendar falls. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that going forward it will be that way. … But certainly we feel like that gives us an opportunity in Montreal to utilize an off Cup weekend somewhere with a high significance.”
