NASCAR and Nashville, they seemingly go together. A sport with roots in the Southeast and a city known for its’ history of country music. Surprisingly maybe to some, Nashville has not always been in NASCAR.
As a matter of fact, fairly recently NASCAR was nonexistent in the “Music City.” Now that NASCAR in Nashville is alive and well, let’s take a look back at the history of NASCAR in Nashville.
In 1958, NASCAR’s Grand National Division, now known as the Cup Series, made their first trip to the city of Nashville. The 0.5 mile Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway hosted the 37th race of the 1958 Grand National season. Joe Weatherly won the race which 32 cars entered, and a new NASCAR mainstay was born.
From then on, the Fairgrounds became a yearly visit for NASCAR, and, from 1973 onwards, the track hosted two races per season. One race was usually hosted in April or May, while the second race was hosted in July or August. The addition of lights in the 1960s meant that night racing became popular at the venue.
The track was also high-banked as much as 35 degrees during its’ history, similar to another famous Tennessee race track. It currently sits at 18 degree banking to this day. Drivers such as Richard Petty (9 Wins), Darrell Waltrip (8 wins), and Cale Yarborough (7 Wins) dominated at the race track.
Unfortunately, the track would not be in NASCAR forever. The track changed hands in ownership multiple times throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and NASCAR left. Former track owner Gary Baker, who bought the track back in 1985 to try to bring NASCAR back, gave his thoughts to Paul Skrbina of The Tennessean.
“I was sick,” Baker said. “I knew the potential. We could have kept the Cup date in the mid-1980s,” he said. “Instead, I’m on the outside looking in.”
Gary Baker in The Tennesseean
Baker also expressed to Skrbina that he desired to build a superspeedway in Nashville, and that he understood why NASCAR left. However, NASCAR was not totally done with the Fairgrounds quite yet.
Despite NASCAR leaving, the Nashville Fairgrounds still hosted their summer racing schedule. NASCAR made a brief return in the late 1980s with two Xfinity Series races won by Waltrip and Rick Mast. However, it was in the 1990s that NASCAR returned more permanently.
NASCAR was expanding in the 1990s and so was Nashville. NASCAR was all about expanding to big markets at this time, and Nashville showed significant potential. Therefore, NASCAR returned to the Fairgrounds on a more permanent basis in 1995 with the Xfinity Series, and the Craftsman Truck Series was added to the weekend for the 1996 season.
While the Fairgrounds remained on the schedule, both places continued to grow. NASCAR was reaching its’ peak, and Nashville now had the Tennessee Titans and the Nashville Predators. The 0.596 mile Fairgrounds with 15,000 seats was not enough, even for NASCAR’s lower divisions, and NASCAR moved to the suburbs.
Dover Motorsports Inc., then owners of Dover International Speedway, constructed a new, state-of-the-art race track in Lebanon, Tennessee, Nashville Superspeedway. While still an intermediate race track similar to those built during this time, it had some unique characteristics.
Just like Dover, the race track was concrete. The race track was also 1.333 miles long, slightly shorter than other 1.5 mile tracks built such as Texas, Chicagoland, Kansas, and Las Vegas. As a result, the track could host NASCAR and IndyCar.
During that first year in 2001, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Craftsman Truck Series, and IndyCar Series each hosted their first races. Greg Biffle, Scott Riggs, and Buddy Lazier won these races. NASCAR rewarded the track with a second Xfinity date in 2002.
The racing product on the track was not that bad. There were some good moments, most notably the 2004 Xfinity Series race where the top-four cars wrecked out, allowing Michael Waltrip to win. However, the track began to falter at the end of the decade.
In 2008, the Indy Racing League merged with Champ Car, reunifying open wheel racing in the United States. Because of both that and increased safety concerns about IndyCars on superspeedways, Nashville was left off of the schedule for 2009.
In 2009, at-track attendance also began to decline. The Xfinity Series races, which used to bring in well over 30,000 people, could only bring in 25,000 and 30,000 each in 2009. In 2010, the attendance fell below 20,000.
Withe the lack of local support, and no hope of a Cup Series date, Nashville Superspeedway hosted its’ final race weekend in 2011. However, it did not go out without a bang, as it hosted one of the most iconic pre-race prayers of all-time.
With no race at Nashville Superspeedway, NASCAR was out of Nashville completely once again. There seemed to be no real potential for the track to return or NASCAR to return to the city. That changed later in the decade.
In 2015, the ARCA Menards Series returned to the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. In 2018, NASCAR officially bought ARCA, meaning that, technically, NASCAR was back in Nashville. In 2019, NASCAR put their foot further into the door.
NASCAR hosted their annual Awards Banquet in 2019 in Nashville, and it was a huge hit. Events such as “Burnouts on the Broadway” brought in throngs of people, and NASCAR in Nashville seemed to be a huge possibility.
The Nashville Fairgrounds was looking at massive renovations to bring NASCAR back, but local and political opposition meant it would not be renovated in-time for NASCAR to return. Dover Motorsports still owned Nashville Superspeedway, and their other track, Dover, was struggling.
With NASCAR now out of contracts with their current race tracks, they took advantage of schedule flexbility. Nashville Superspeedway was added back to the schedule in place of one of the Dover races. The race was scheduled for June, the traditional time of year for its’ second Xfinity Series race.
In 2021, NASCAR racing returned to Nashville. A sell-out crowd greeted the Cup Series stars to Nashville Superspeedway. Kyle Larson stunk up the show, leading 264 laps, but that was minimal compared to the impact this race had.
It was the first inaugural race that season to have no weather issues. It symbolized both NASCAR’s return to one of their oldest markets and NASCAR’s willingness to expand their schedule. Something that had been missing from NASCAR for years.
NASCAR returned in 2022 to another good crowd, but rain spoiled most of the day. Regardless, NASCAR was back in Nashville, and it seemed it would stay for a while.
With the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway renovations still in flux, the future of NASCAR in Nashville is unclear, but it’s bright at the same time. NASCAR belongs there, and hopefully it stay for a long time.
EchoPark Speedway, or Atlanta Motor Speedway, is often touted as the most exciting track on the NASCAR circuit. What was first seen as a Frankenstein experiment, Marcus Smith’s idea to turn AMS into a baby Daytona worked out in the end. We’ve gotten great race after great race and tonight was no different as fans saw Tyler Reddick power by Carson Hocevar to go two in a row to start the season.
But not everyone had a season to remember. Many drivers and teams had a season that they’d sooner forget. These are the biggest losers of the 2026 EchoPark Speedway racing weekend.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race officials rightly got blasted online by fans after they made the extremely questionable decision to put the Truck race on Saturday on the weather clock. That would have been an understandable move if circumstances were different. But they caught flak because 1.) EchoPark Speedway has lights, 2.) the weather had moved out for the weekend, and 3.)…umm…they were only 10 laps shy from the scheduled distance anyway.
Now, we know who the defenders are. The O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Race was slated to follow, but NASCAR has pushed races off in the past. And really, how much time would the CW have lost? Ten minutes? Twenty? If that? That, in my book, makes the NCTS officials some of the biggest losers on the weekend. They owe us fans ten more measly laps for racing!
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Of any driver currently in the Chevy ranks, none has had the support thrown behind them like Corey Day. Day, a protege of proven NASCAR champion Kyle Larson, apparently has turned some heads on the dirt scene. Makes sense, since Larson himself said that he’d rather win the Chili Bowl than the Daytona 500. But unlike other drivers, such as Connor Zilisch, who have excelled in other racing disciplines outside of NASCAR, Day’s career so far has been lukewarm at best. And his race yesterday was the epitome of a rookie race, ladened with senseless mistakes.
The incident that hurt the most was the one where he wrecked his fellow HMS/JRM teammates, Carson Kvapil and Justin Allgaier. He simply just took them out while racing for the race lead. Though he was, somehow, able to rebound to finish the race in the 4th position, yesterday was a sloppy performance that even Corey himself acknowledges that he’d rather put behind him.
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Chastain did it again! And now, the feelings are mixed. Remember when Ross Chastain used to just send drivers willy-nilly, and it really got on fans’ nerves? Well, thankfully, he’s calmed down in recent years and has become a more respectable veteran of the sport. That is not to say that he still doesn’t have his…moments. Saturday night at the O’Reilly Auto Parts race, Ross Chastain, going for the win, entered turn 1 and sent leader Austin Hill.
Hill was the overwhelming favorite to win this race, and fans have grown sick of him. So, really, this was a welcome return to form for Chastain, a version of him that used to be loathed by fans. Thus, while fans might have won out by Chastain doing what he does best and slaying Austin Hill, the RCR team, and really, anyone who has Chastain in their rearview mirror in the closing laps, are the real losers this weekend.
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There were a couple of drivers who ended 2025 on a sour note and were looking to turn things around and start 2026 strong. One of those has to be Josh Berry and his entire Wood Brothers team. After floundering around with Harrison Burton for a few seasons, the No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford got the shot in the arm that they needed with a new crew chief and Josh Berry as their new driver. They led a bunch of laps at Atlanta in 2025, only for a wreck with 10 laps to go to take them out of contention. Not to worry, though: they followed it up with a win at Las Vegas.
But since that win, the team suffered a steep decline heading into the summer months. By the time the postseason rolled around, they had the single worst Playoff performance in history with three straight last-place finishes. Though he had a promising start to the season with a 9th-place run in the Daytona 500, it was the same old same old tonight. Berry showed some speed in the first stage but ultimately crashed after Christopher Bell forced the issue in the beginning of Stage 2. It’s a familiar routine for the Wood Brothers. Yet another last-place finish. That makes them one of the biggest losers of the weekend. If only they could have capitalized.
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This one’s a tired subject, so I won’t dwell on it too long. Kyle Busch’s late career decline at Richard Childress Racing should be studied. Though he showed speed early on, it was yet again a single-car spin that ended his day prematurely. Granted, he didn’t spin completely on his own. He was tagged from behind by Noah Gragson. But, that was after he checked up twice and recklessly pulled up in front of him in a hole that was barely there. Yet another disappointing outing for Rowdy Nation.
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The checkered flag has flown in the second race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Season. And, at the end of the day, it was Tyler Reddick who went back-to-back to win at EchoPark Speedway. Tonight, Reddick became the sixth NASCAR Cup Series driver to win the first two races of the season. He is the first since NASCAR Hall of Famer Matt Kenseth did it to kick off the 2009 season.
But, of course, Reddick wasn’t the only one to have a great start to the season. Several drivers leave Atlanta with a great points day, including Carson Hocevar, Bubba Wallace, William Byron, and Ryan Blaney. Here are the highlights of tonight’s race:
From an awful showing in the 2025 Playoffs to yet another last-place finish, Josh Berry’s 2026 season is off to a rough start. Today, he got together with Ty Gibbs after Gibbs had an awful start to the year last year. The No. 54 was able to turn it around later in the season, though. But, for their 2026 outing, there’s a lot left to be desired. Check it out.
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Kyle Busch’s 2025 season was abysmal. But, after he put his No. 8 RCR Chevy on the pole for the 2026 Daytona 500, things seemed to be looking up. He smartly survived last week by lying back on the last lap and safely navigating through the crash, finishing 15th. And he was a contender early in this race. However, late, Kyle Busch continued his dismal legacy at RCR by spinning after contact with Noah Gragson. His day ended prematurely. Check it out:
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We got our first big crash of the race at Lap 224 when both Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano got loose in front of the field. You can read all about that incident with the link below:
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Things started to get real for the NASCAR Cup Series drivers as we got inside 40 laps to go. We got our first Big One of the afternoon at Lap 224. It was triggered as the field came out of Turn 4 and entered the dogleg. Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin, both whose cars were upset by the dirty air, got together. Logano was able to scoot on virtually unscathed. However, Hamlin turned in front of the pack, collecting several stars and heavy hitters. Here’s what happened:
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