North Wilkesboro Speedway to host NASCAR’s 2023 All-Star race

RALEIGH, N.C. — NASCAR is returning to one of its original venues that it left more than a quarter-century ago: North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Gov. Roy Cooper and North Carolina native Dale Earnhardt Jr. joined the stock car body and the track’s owner on Thursday to announce that the track will host the NASCAR Cup Series All-Star race next year — NASCAR’s 75th anniversary season.

“It’ll be something that people want to come from all over the country and enjoy – NASCAR All-Star week at North Wilkesboro Speedway — to enjoy the culture, the festivities, the history,” Marcus Smith, CEO of Speedway Motorsports, which owns the track, said at a news conference outside the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. “We’re excited to revive it.”

The .625-mile (1-kilometer) asphalt oval, located almost 70 miles (113 kilometers) northwest of Charlotte, hosted the year-ending race in 1949 for what became the Cup Series. It became an annual stop on the schedule, hosting two races a year starting in 1951, and was a throwback to the days when moonshine runners in the region – NASCAR legend Junior Johnson among them – drove fast cars to escape authorities.

North Wilkesboro hosted more than 90 Cup races before it closed in 1996, a result of NASCAR’s dramatic growth during that time and arguments that it wasn’t large or fancy enough as the sport tapped into new markets. The track’s races went to New Hampshire and Texas.

The oval went into disrepair, and non-NASCAR racing at the legendary track in the early 2010s fizzled. But former drivers like Earnhardt Jr., local boosters, and state officials wouldn’t give up on the venue, which has a direct connection to NASCAR’s birth.

But a recent effort to renovate the speedway had taken off, buoyed by $18 million in federal American Rescue Plan funds earmarked by the North Carolina state legislature last year for infrastructure improvements.

The legislature has agreed in principle to provide another $4 million next year for additional improvements to host the race next May 21 and for “future events over the next several years,” said Greg Walter, general manager at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Speedway Motorsports’ flagship venue.

The All-Star race originally began in 1985 as The Winston and was usually held in May the week before the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It’s been held the past two years at Texas Motor Speedway, most recently won by Ryan Blaney.

While the North Wilkesboro decision was months in the making,…