NASCAR officials have elected to postpone this weekend’s (March 13-15) racing festivities at Atlanta Motor Speedway due to COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
Additionally, NASCAR racing at Homestead Miami Speedway next weekend (March 20-22) has also been canceled. Although nearly every team across all three NASCAR national touring series had shown up to the circuit, NASCAR restricted team access from the garage and told teams to pack up and leave the facility.
“We believe this decision is in the best interest of the safety and well being of our fans, competitors, officials and everyone associated with our sport,” a NASCAR release said. “We will continue to monitor this dynamic situation as we assess future events.”
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 13, 2020
NASCAR originally planned to hold all events originally scheduled this weekend, despite making the decision to bar spectators and non-essential personnel from the track for health and safety concerns. NASCAR had previously canceled this weekend’s ARCA Menards East Series at Five Flags Speedway.
NASCAR is the latest to join other high-profile motorsports entities, including IMSA, Formula 1, IndyCar and the NHRA, to cancel or postpone events scheduled in the near future.
A timetable for the resumption of normal racing procedures is unknown.
Never at a loss for words, Zach Gillispie is a young, talented marketing professional from North Carolina who talks and writes on the side about his first love: racing! Since joining Frontstretch in 2018, Zach has served in numerous roles where he currently pens the NASCAR 101 column, a weekly piece delving into the basic nuts and bolts of the sport. Additionally, his unabashedly bold takes meshed with that trademarked dry wit of his have made Zach a fan favorite on the weekly Friday Faceoff panel. In his free time, he can be found in the great outdoors, actively involved in his church, cheering on his beloved Atlanta Braves or ruthlessly pestering his colleagues with completely useless statistics about Delma Cowart.
Whatever.
Now Nascar looks stupid. If they had cancelled with all the other sports leagues, they might have gotten criticism, but now they are getting double. 1)For not doing it sooner, and another for actually sending teams to the track and then turning around and sending them home. Teams can’t be happy about spending all that money to get down to Atlanta for nothing.
Come on. It’s NASCAR.
No one in the larger world is paying attention. Just we fans.
Might get a quick mention outside of NASCAR based media, if any.
I mean the college basketball tournament waited till minutes before tip off to cancel. There were a lot of boos in that stadium. At least NASCAR didn’t wait till moments before drivers were to take to the track I suppose. I think that is officially every major American sport except the NFL that has canceled. NFL is only a matter of time as the majority of pro-days are canceled which is crucial to the pre-draft process.
Haven’t we learned anything since almost two decades ago? The fine caring people of the GUBMENT can get away with anything by saying “for your safety”. If you disagree with the large umbrella of the “safety” statement a whole bunch of names are thrown at you and you just don’t care about people! This is calculated hysteria groupthink with huge political end game results being played out right now. The quickness of all this is very telling and suspect. And of course “Corporations”, etc. do not want to be THAT GUY who gets the proverbial sandwich board hung around their neck with worded accusations that they do not care for their fellow man! Sheep!
It’s the lawyers KB (which is really the same thing as the Gov’t). If you host the event, they will line up to sue you.
No doubt, that is one small piece of this slimy experiment. The losers are plotting this to this manic level, to tank the economy and sway public opinion of a popular duly elected, policy succesful President. Like him or not. It is an out and out coup ramped up on steroids’ and their other clown car tactics did not work! Not hard to figure out as their clown car antics prior to this have been unsuccessful. IMO.
I think NASCAR made a hard decision. IMO they should have raced since teams was already there.
Waiting two weeks and see how this shakes out is OK.
I understand the ideal thing to happen with this virus would be containment. More likely we try to keep everyone from getting sick at the same time and over running the medical infrastructure. But we all eventually get sick.
Think about it – they would have had the sports airwaves all to themselves. Probably at least a 10-share for Atlanta. NASCAR simply cannot get out of its own way. How sad