On Thursday, Aug. 29, NASCAR will finally release the schedules for all three of its national touring series.
One of them is all but known. The full NASCAR Cup Series schedule has been reported out by Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, to go along with other previously announced dates on the calendar.
As of this writing, however, the NASCAR Xfinity Series schedule remains in secrecy. But there is plenty that can be worked out as it is.
The first question, of course, will be standalone races. There are two that have been somewhat confirmed. First, FOX Sports reported that Rockingham Speedway will return to the schedule with a standalone race on Easter weekend. This means that there will be no off-weekends for NASCAR from the Daytona 500 to championship weekend, as the lone Cup off-weekend will be Easter.
The second would be Portland International Raceway. Already the lone NXS standalone, Portland was seemingly confirmed by series team owner Tommy Joe Martins in a tweet.
As there have been no strong rumors for new standalones and with no NASCAR at the Milwaukee Mile next season, this is probably it. The other 31 races will likely be companion races to the Cup Series.
But let’s dive in even further. NASCAR has scheduled Portland to be next to Sonoma Raceway on the schedule, just because of logistics. Xfinity teams can save some money with the two back-to-backs, instead of having to make another round trip or only going out west for just one standalone race.
Per The Athletic’s report, Sonoma is in between the Chicago Street Course and Dover Motor Speedway. Obviously, NXS will be back at Chicago next season.
That leaves Dover as the odd man out, which means the Truck Series gets to go support that weekend. As Dover is an SMI-owned racetrack, this makes where the current NXS date at that track goes to rather elementary.
When Bristol Motor Speedway used to hold dirt races in the spring, the NXS race there was moved in favor of a Craftsman Truck Series race, as that series had already been running dirt at Eldora…
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