Kyle Larson Wasn’t The Only One Celebrating A Nascar Win At North Wilkesboro

Hendrick Motorsports wasn’t the only group celebrating a victory Sunday night at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Kyle Larson and the Hendrick team won NASCAR’s All-Star Race, the annual exhibition race that showcases the best the sport of NASCAR has to offer. The first event was in 1985 and for many years was held at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Covid forced a move to Bristol Motor Speedway in 2020, then to Texas Motor Speedway the following year.

For 2023, NASCAR decided to give an abandoned speedway a second chance. North Wilkesboro Speedway in Western North Carolina was once a shining star on NASCAR’s schedule hosting events from 1949 until 1996 when NASCAR’s expansion took them out of the state where the sport was born; further afield to the Northeast and West.

In late 2022 however, NASCAR announced it was coming home.

North Wilkesboro Speedway and the surrounding community threw out the welcome mat, painted, rebuilt, and freshened up not only the speedway, but the town as well. And this past weekend the results were on display for the entire world to see.

It all began in December 2019 when the sport’s most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., came to the track to scan it for the iRacing platform. Weeds grew through the cracks in the track surface; buildings barely stood. The property looked like a post-apocalyptic world. Earnhardt put out an “all-call” for help not just to clear the racing surface, but the property itself.

Driver Chris Buescher was one of those who answered the call and came to the track, about an hour from NASCAR’s home base of Charlotte to begin the process of cleaning it up.

“I’ve driven by this place countless times on my way to Bristol through the years,” he said. “And watched the evergreens grow up through the grandstands of one and two, and just knew that it was a lost racetrack.”

According to Buescher, who won of the heat races Saturday night, the track appeared to be ready for a bulldozer when he first showed up to help with the cleanup with a skid steer and a dump trailer.

“A lot of the heavy lifting was already done, so I got to walk around here with a shovel scraping dirt out of the cracks,” he said. “It wasn’t near as much fun as I was hoping on the skid steer, but it was cool to see it come from what it was that day and watching a photographer leg went through a grandstand floorboard. It was rough.”

Saturday night he was in a rebuilt building used as a media center and a driver’s lounge.

“This room right here was terrifying,” Buescher said chuckling and remembering the first time he was there. “I mean, post-apocalyptic. It was disgusting. Stuff all over the place. It was insane and to see what it is today it’s amazing. Hat’s off to everybody. It’s really cool. That makes it that much more special. I’m telling you, when we walked through that door right there it was straight out of the Walking Dead in here. It was terrifying. There was a gurney on its side right here. It was terrible. I’m telling you; it was something else.”

After an $18 million government infusion the track is now something else entirely. Grandstands were rebuilt and some were added. Facilities were repaired, and fresh paint was applied while some of the old signage was merely cleaned; an entrance sign manufactured by pieces of rusty metal from an old chicken house on the property greeted fans entering the track. The finished results had all the newness needed for now, while still showing shadows of its past.

“It’s like walking into a museum that’s active and living and very special for the competitors and the fans alike.,” Speedway Motorsports president Marcus Smith said.

Smith and his team at Speedway Motorsports, which owns the track, oversaw the final restoration process to bring NASCAR back.

In the week leading up to this Sunday’s All Star event fans saw plenty of racing from support events from other series were held; Saturday the NASCAR Truck series held the first NASCAR race of the weekend. That was followed by two heat races for the Cup series to set the field for the All-Star Race.

“It’s been fun,” driver Daniel Suarez who won the first heat said. “I’ve been here since Monday, so I’ve been living here for a while (laughs). But you know it’s been a lot of fun to see the fans – so loyal since Monday or Tuesday. It’s been a lot of fun to see that. This place has so much history. Just look at the walls… there’s so much history everywhere you look.

“For me, to be a small part of this and have the opportunity to put on a show for all these fans, our race teams, NASCAR and all the fans at home – it’s quite special. Overall, just very happy to be here.”

As for bringing back the All-Star event next year, no one at NASCAR or SMI is ready to answer that just yet. That doesn’t mean however, the conversation hasn’t started.

“It’s a question that’s on my mind, as well,” Smith said. “I think that when you see a successful week of events like we’ve had here, it’s natural to think, ‘boy, maybe we could come back here’. I’m definitely thinking that way, that it’s got a lot of potential.

“I’ve never been to a NASCAR week where everybody was in such a good mood, and everything was just going so well. It’s definitely something that we’re thinking about.

“We just started working on next year’s schedule with NASCAR, so we’ll see. I think that — not speaking to next year specifically, I do think that there’s definitely a place in the NASCAR world for North Wilkesboro Speedway, and whether it’s a special event like All-Star, maybe one day it’s a points event, I don’t know.”

For fans, especially those who call Wilkesboro and the surrounding area home, NASCAR’s return was a dream come true.

Jeff Mitchell lives five miles from the track. He was among the large crowd of fans walking around the merchandise alley and midway prior to Sunday’s race.

“We didn’t think it’d ever happened,” the retired Lowes employee said. “We want to thank Junior, Marcus Smith, everybody for helping.”

“It’s wonderful. I mean, this is cold chills,” he added as the crowd milled about. “Just getting to go back.

“When you grow up at the racetrack, then all of a sudden, it’s taken away from you. It’s like you lost a family member. It’s like all of a sudden, the family members came back. As you can tell, I mean, we’re all pumped up. We’re excited.”

Mitchell was at Saturday’s Truck series race, the first competitive NASCAR race at the track since 1996.

“It’s a dream come true,” he said. “Something you didn’t think would ever really happen. And then Kyle Larson winning, that’s my wife’s favorite driver, so she was excited. But just seeing a NASCAR sanctioned event for the first time in 27 years was just awesome.”

As for the future for North Wilkesboro, local fans like Jeff Mitchell hope NASCAR hears them and took notice of the large crowds during the week.

“I think NASCAR has to realize their roots are through this type of racing,” he said. “I think the mile and a half was a good business model for a while, but as you can see, to me it’s better to have 30,000 people fill the place up that have 150,000 plus, you know, and half full.

“I think it’s what people want to see. I think the crews like it. They bring their families up. You’re not that far from Charlotte. I mean this is where stock car racing started in our heads. This is home for NASCAR. We think it’s got a good future.

“We’ll have to repave the track of course in next year or so. But for what they’ve done in one year from being in town and seeing what was going on a year ago to now, it’s, I don’t know how they did it. I think they worked 24 7 to get it done. It is awesome. It’s awesome.”

While NASCAR has focused on attracting a younger audience to the sport in recent years, by going back to a once shuttered track like North Wilkesboro they’re showing that they aren’t afraid to acknowledge the past, and the legacy fans who remember what NASCAR was once like.

“There’s two things in our family we love,” Mitchell said. “Appalachian State football and NASCAR racing.”

With the return of North Wilkesboro, fans like the Mitchell family can attend both college football games and like they did this past Sunday, NASCAR racing.

“See we had to go to Martinsville,” he said. “You had to go to Bristol, Darlington, which ain’t that far. But that wasn’t our track.

“This is our track; we take pride in it.”