When the NASCAR industry returns to North Wilkesboro Speedway for the 2024 All Star Race festivities, it will be greeted by new pavement all the way around the historic .625-mile short track.
The first NASCAR event at the oldest track in the league since 1996 was met with widespread applause but the on-track product was more of a mixed bag due to the state of a surface that had sat in place since 1981 alongside a Cup Series car that struggles to race well on short tracks.
The races that took place as part of the 2023 All Star week took place mostly on that aged track but the bottom apron was resurfaced with concrete and there were several patches in the pavement from where the it had started to peel up.
The patches provided more grip to the bottom than the top, making the racing very one-grooved for the Cup cars, which also were able to wrap around the bottom using the concrete.
To create the new surface, track owners Speedway Motorsports milled two inches of the old track, repaired parts of the underlying surface that required it and laying down a new asphalt mixture in the same configuration as what came before and that includes the 13-degree banked corners.
“There’s not a race track that I’m aware of other than North Wilkesboro Speedway that ran on a 4-year-old surface,” said Steve Swift of SMI who oversees the company’s race track maintenance programs. “That is a tribute to the asphalt they used back in the 80s. That was a really good product. There are not many new tracks that have been placed since the 90s that will last 30 years.
“We were really deferential to try to maintain the character that was here before. Naturally, the old track was a unique creature. The patch materials that we had to use kind of changed the All Star Race, just because of where we had to patch it.
“The product created so much grip, so it’s going to be pretty exciting to see where it goes back to where they were racing two-wide and three-wide. Now the track has got the same grip all the way across.”
Speedway Motorsports is using an aggregate of asphalt that is designed to age quicker, similar to an approach used at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a track that is coming into its own due to a surface that is aging quicker than expected.
Swift says Atlanta has underwent an 8-10 percent grip level falloff after two years.
In true North Wilkesboro throwback nature, Carl Rose & Sons Asphalt, the original paving contractor for North Wilkesboro supplied nearly 2,000 tons of specialty asphalt for the project while North Carolina-based Delta Contracting managed the milling process.
Sumers Taylor, a contractor from nearby Johnson City, Tenn., used a process called echelon paving to lay a seamless surface across the roughly 50-foot-wide track.
The NASCAR portion of All Star week is scheduled for May 17-19 with the Truck Series and Cup Series. CARS Tour has scheduled a race that week and other races may soon be added.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.