New Track President & Bubba Wallace Provide Spark For Richmond

While much of the talk in racing circles has been about the resurrection of North Wilkesboro Speedway this month, another track dating back to the early days of the NASCAR Cup Series is having a revival of its own: Richmond Raceway.

And that revival is being led by new track president Lori Collier Waran and driver Bubba Wallace.

Waran became Richmond’s first female president when she took over the job last month from Dennis Bickmeier, who had held the position since 2011. While Waran is new to the role, she is extremely familiar with the racetrack. As a child, she helped her grandfather park cars for the Richmond races as a means to get to watch the competition.

“He would park cars here for a lot of the events here, especially for races,” Waran told Frontstretch. “That was a way he could afford to watch. He lived just a couple blocks away, and he wanted to be able to afford it, and he couldn’t always. So that was the way he could.

“He would bring me along to help him park sometimes, sort of piggyback on his shoulders and help him park cars. I was pretty terrible at it. But that was a great memory that I had with him.”

And while Waran’s interest in NASCAR waned in her teenage years, it was reignited when she started dating her now-husband.

“He was an uber fan of NASCAR,” Waran said. “So he was the one that really got me interested in the sport of NASCAR and really taught me all about it, taught me the drivers, got me interested in the likes of Dale Earnhardt, Terry Labonte and sort of showed me the ways of Tony Stewart and the Sadler brothers and just really got me into it.”

That sort of NASCAR background should blend well with a track steeped in racing history.

Richmond has been on the Cup schedule every year since 1955, though it has evolved greatly over that timeframe. It started out as a dirt track half-time before getting paved in 1968. It was then reconfigured to its current 0.75-mile layout in 1988, which is when its popularity exploded to become one of the hottest tickets on the NASCAR circuit.

From 1992-2008, the track sold out for 33 consecutive races, with additional grandstands being built along the way to get the capacity from over 59,000 to over 112,000. But then the 2008 recession hit, followed by a decline in NASCAR popularity.

Since then, seating has been reduced to 51,000. And there have been many races with far less fans in attendance than the smaller capacity allows. On top of that, Waran and company are…