New for this year, O’Reilly Auto Parts became the title sponsor for not just one, but two NASCAR series — and hopefully, it can be just what both of them need.
Of course, the number two national series became the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, but the NASCAR Local Racing Series (formerly the Weekly Series) is now presented by O’Reilly as well. It’s the first time the Local Series has shared a title sponsor with a national series since Winston from 1982-2001.
During that span, Winston went above and beyond at the grassroots level, giving a uniformity across NASCAR-sanctioned tracks right down to the walls all being painted the same colors. It was also during this time that the biggest stars of the NASCAR Cup Series (then the Winston Cup Series) would go to little bullrings, depending on where Cup was racing, and they would race, beefing up the crowds and overall show in the process. Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Harry Gant, Ken Schrader and more would all contribute, making the grassroots scene healthier while also connecting with the fans there to build their own fanbases in the process.
That really doesn’t happen as much as it used to. Kyle Larson does a great job with it in the dirt world. Kyle Busch did a lot of grassroots racing when he was alive, and Chase Elliott, Carson Hocevar and a few others continue to do some to this day. But it’s not like it was 30-40 years ago for the paved ovals.
Sure, the Thunder Road Harley-Davidson 200 at South Boston Speedway this past Saturday (June 27) had three full-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series drivers in it (Kaden Honeycutt, Brenden “Butterbean” Queen and Mini Tyrrell), but those guys aren’t that far removed from being full-time late model drivers. There was no incentive for them to enter that race; they did so because they wanted to. And the way the schedule is laid out, it’s going to be difficult for those three to do all three legs of the Virginia Triple Crown.
I’d like to see O’Reilly launch some kind of initiative to get the NOAPS drivers into some of the local shows. It would only bolster both series it sponsors by doing so and grow the followings of the NOAPS regulars.
But that’s just the first step of what O’Reilly should do to connect the two series. The next would be to influence NASCAR to get NOAPS away from racing in Cup’s shadow every week and have standalone races once again at the local short tracks.
This year, there is only one weekend on the schedule where NOAPS isn’t racing with Cup: Easter Weekend at Rockingham Speedway. The past two years, that event has been a huge success. For the first 20 or so years of NOAPS existence, it raced at a ton of shorts tracks, including South Boston, Myrtle Beach Speedway, Hickory Motor Speedway, Orange County Speedway and more. It’d join up with Cup for weekends at Daytona International Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Darlington Raceway and a few others, but there were only a handful of companion weekends.
What that did was not only give a boost to the local short tracks, but it also gave the heroes of those tracks opportunities to race on the national stage. Elliott Sadler comes to mind, who wowed in his NOAPS debut at South Boston, finishing eighth, and ended up making a national series career out of it. Dennis Setzer was a track champion at Hickory and Caraway Speedway, and NOAPS starts at Hickory helped him get on the map.
Think how many track champions there are out there today who have never even sniffed the NASCAR national series. Go to their tracks and put on a NOAPS race and that will change. If you need proof that’s still possible, look at how many Bowman Gray Stadium stars have gotten to race in the Busch Light Clash there the past two years.
NASCAR got away from many of these tracks during the era of packing grandstands full of 100,000 fans, even at NOAPS races. But the races for that series aren’t drawing those types of crowds anymore, so wouldn’t it look better to pack 10,000 people into a short track for it?
Getting more races on the local short tracks would not just benefit those tracks and their drivers. It would benefit NOAPS as well. I mentioned how it would build the series regulars’ fanbases by connecting to the local fans, but it would also give that series a much-needed identity.
Don’t think that series has an identity problem? NASCAR Executive Vice President John Probst himself said it did in an interview with Sports Business Journal back in April.
“If you look at the brand identity of those three, the O’Reilly Series struggles a little bit just from the car perspective, and you see it a lot because we refer to it often as whoever the entitlement sponsor is,” Probst said.
Sure, the series is doing great at the moment, as every race this season so far has over one million viewers and its car puts on the best racing consistently. But Ford has already dropped out of the series, and while Dodge intends to go Cup racing, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it didn’t even bother entering NOAPS. Also, it’s losing its status as a developmental series, as more and more drivers are jumping straight from the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series to Cup.
The car has to change eventually, with Probst floating the idea of making it a CUV series. That would be an absolutely detrimental change to it that I believe would lead to its eventual demise.
The better move would be to make it a late model stock car series so that drivers could come and go between that and the local short tracks. Then, the cars would be cheaper to field and wouldn’t be as reliant on manufacturer support. And it would help the local stars to break into the national level. That is the third step of what O’Reilly should step in and influence.
And, hey, if you want to add a fourth, O’Reilly could further connect the two series it’s sponsoring by offering NOAPS sponsorship to the defending Local Racing national champion each year.
It’s your move, O’Reilly. If you want to go down as an even more critical NASCAR sponsor than Winston was and build some amazing brand equity with NASCAR fans, who are vastly loyal to sponsors that make them happy, I’ve just given you the playbook.
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.
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