How to Buy Tickets To Your First NASCAR Race

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Are you a new fan of NASCAR? Were you just flipping through the channels one day and landed on FOX or NBC or one of their affiliates and saw, for the first time, the addicting, balls-to-the-wall action that is NASCAR? And, as you watched, did you get a glimpse of their screaming diehard fans in the stands? Did you think that it looked fun; that maybe one day you’d like to attend a NASCAR race just to see what the in-person experience is all about?

Well, you’re in luck! Today we’re going to go over just how easy it is to purchase race tickets, a few need-to-know details about a typical NASCAR race weekend, and what all you need to do in preparation for your first life-changing in-person experience as a NASCAR fan! Let’s check it out!

Where and What to Buy

The first thing you want to do when looking into buying tickets for your first NASCAR race is to look at the schedule and check for tracks near you or in neighboring states. They will be the easiest to get to and, if you can somehow get out of having to foot the bill for a hotel room that will be all the better. You can see the full 2024 NASCAR Schedule, including Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks, in the link below:

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You Need To Know:

  • While most of the time the Xfinity and Trucks schedule overlap with the Cup racing weekend, there are times when Trucks or Xfinity are at a different track than the Cup Series. So, it’s important to look at the dates and discrepancies when looking at the schedule.
  • It is also important to note that most tracks on the NASCAR schedule are owned by either Speedway Motorsports Incorporated (SMI) or International Speedway Corporation (ISC, a subsidiary of NASCAR itself). In our experience, you can usually buy tickets directly from the track’s website if the track is owned by ISC while SMI tracks usually link you to a third-party ticket provider such as Ticketmaster.

SMI

For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to take a look at where you need to buy tickets based on the tracks closest to me. I live in a small town in east Tennessee, so my closest track is Bristol Motor Speedway. Therefore, I’ll be using BMS in my example. The first thing you would need to do is to log into your favorite search engine and look up the name of the track. I went to Google, typed Bristol Motor Speedway, and clicked on the first link which took me to the main BMS website. You can take a gander at the home screen in the screenshot below.

In the top-right corner of the screen, you can see a Buy Tickets button. Go ahead and click on that and it’ll take you to the Event Schedule page which you can see below.

From this page, you can see the upcoming events for the 2024 racing season. The two NASCAR race weekends at BMS are in March and September respectively. The June date is reserved for NHRA (drag racing) and a country music festival. We’re ignoring those for the time being because the only thing you’re interested in is attending your first NASCAR race.

For the sake of intrigue, we’re going to assume you want to go to the famous Bristol Night Race, which is in September. There is always more going on during this particular race weekend as the Xfinity and Arca Series join the Trucks and Cup for a short track throwdown. To check out the ticket info for this particular race weekend, click on the Bass Pro Shops Night Race button and it’ll take you to the event page as seen below.

From here you have the option of buying the weekend package or just tickets for that single event. The weekend package usually includes some sort of deal. Here you can see that you can save up to 15% if you bite the bullet and get the whole weekend bundle. Whichever option you choose, it will then take you to the Ticketmaster website because, again, SMI uses Ticketmaster to sell the tickets for the tracks they own as well as the tracks they lease out (such as COTA). This is what you’ll see on the Ticketmaster site:

Here, anything in blue still has seats left. Where sections are gray, that means that either the seats are already sold or that particular section of the grandstand is closed. Off to the right you can see the handy key. And the prices range from $10 all the way up to $205. From here, you can click whichever grandstand you want to sit in then the image zooms in close to show every seat in that section. It looks like this:

Again, the gray dots are seats that have already been sold while the blue dots are seats that are still available. This particular section is right at the start/finish line. When you click on the section, this little tab will pop up on the right side of your screen. The ticket type drop-down menu includes 2 options: Children under 12 (which is the $10 option) or an adult ticket which is full price.

After you’ve chosen where you want to sit, you will then add the ticket to your cart. After that, click the little shopping cart in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. That will take you to this screen:

You will then click the green Checkout button on the bottom right. Then all you’ll need to do is put in the necessary credit card information and, once the purchase is complete, Bristol Motor Speedway will email your tickets to you. From there, you can either add them to your Google wallet or print them outright and present them to the speedway workers when you arrive at the track.

ISC

The ISC tracks, otherwise known as NASCAR-owned tracks, sell their tickets via Tickets.com rather than Ticketmaster. It’s pretty much the same from the website’s perspective. On the home screen of, say, Martinsville Speedway, just hover your cursor over the menu option reading Events. A drop-down menu will then appear and from there you can select directly which race weekend at the track you want to attend: either the spring race weekend or the fall.

That’ll then shoot you over to Tickets.com which looks like this:

This screen is pretty much the same as the one on the Bristol site. Just click the section you want to sit in and then you’ll be shuffled over to another screen and here is where things change.

As you can see in the image above, the seats that are sold or unavailable are in gray and the seats colored in red are the ones that are still up for grabs. Here, you can physically click on the seats you want to sit in. Like, for example, you wanted three seats together near the end of the row. You can pick three together yourself, a nice touch that was not an option on the Ticketmaster website.

As you can see, the black seats are the ones I selected. You can then click the red CONTINUE button on the bottom right and it’ll take you to a sign-in screen. Don’t be alarmed. If you don’t have an account, you can create one. Then, once you’re logged in, go to your cart and click Checkout.

Then, same as the BMS site, you enter your credit card info and all that good stuff and, once your payment has gone through, they’ll send you an email with your tickets and you’re all set for your first ever NASCAR race weekend!

Conclusion

Hey, Daily Downforce readers and (hopefully) some new fans of his great sport! I hope you all found this little tutorial helpful in prepping to attend your first (or your 100th!) NASCAR race weekend!

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Cody Williams

Cody Williams is the author of BUNNY BOY, THE FIFTH LINE, and THE LEGEND OF GROOVY HOLLOW. He lives near Bristol, TN.
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