It always seemed like a possibility but NASCAR on FOX play by play broadcaster Mike Joy may have let some major breaking news slip early in the Cup Series race on Sunday at Kansas Speedway.
In a segment talking about pit crews and an over-the-wall athlete, Joy dropped this line:
“He went to Winston Salem State and we might race at their stadium soon, which is Bowman Gray,” Joy said over the air.
Speculation has run rampant about the potential of a NASCAR national touring race at the flat quarter mile inside the football stadium used by WSSU ever since the sanctioning body acquired the lease this year for weekly racing operations.
NASCAR’s vice president of scheduling and racing innovation, Ben Kennedy, the great grandson of NASCAR founder Bill France didn’t rule it out in March either.
“Potentially. I certainly wouldn’t rule anything out, and I’d be lying to say if we haven’t talked about it before,” Kennedy said. “We’ve talked about hundreds of tracks. … So obviously nothing to report today. Our focus is really getting up and running on April 20 this year with weekly Modified racing.”
The Stadium is perhaps the most well known weekly short track in the nation, contesting races from April to August every year, and has also been the subject of documentary series on History Channel, Discovery Channel and FloSports.
The NASCAR Cup Series has raced on a similar quarter mile the past three years inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was also the site of the first ever pavement races in what is now the history of the Cup Series, running races there from 1958–1971.
Maybe NASCAR’s past is now its future.