CONCORD — On the Sunday before Memorial Day, Humpy Wheeler will look out his window in the Smith Tower and watch the United States Armed Forces blow up his speedway.
That pre-race spectacular honoring the military is the first sortie of the final day of what has become Wheeler’s trademark event: Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s 10 days of speed. Beginning with The Winston, NASCAR’s all-star event, and culminating with the Coca-Cola 600, Winston Cup racing’s longest event, Wheeler and track owner Bruton Smith have staked claim to stock car racing’s month of May.
It rivals Daytona’s 10-day run in February and coincides with Indiana’s month-long festivities leading up to the Indianapolis 500 on the same afternoon.
Wheeler, president and general manager of LMS, has made his celebration electric. It is packed with fireworks, smoke, mirrors and everything associated with adrenaline. From his office high atop the 1.5-mile quad-oval, he has watched it unfold. His ideas have turned Lowe’s Motor Speedway into a state-of-the-art arena with “fan-friendly” stamped in capital letters on the door.
“I have seen this event really grow in all the years I have been in racing,” says Bryant Frazier, crew chief of Buckshot Jones’ No. 44 Dodge. “I think that Humpy Wheeler is one heck of a promoter. The fans get one of the best deals in racing out of this. The strategy that can be played in The Winston is comparable to that of a world-championship chess game. As a crew chief I think it’s really exciting and challenging.”
As The Winston, the Coca-Cola 600 and Lowe’s Motor Speedway have grown, so has NASCAR. In its recent period of unprecedented growth, both the series and the speedway have multiplied with the times.
They have coat-tailed on hard work and loyal fans. It is the Charlotte-metro economy that has benefited most — marking this area as the unofficial homebase of NASCAR racing.
With so many drivers residing in and around Charlotte, Wheeler’s two weeks in May have turned into a homecoming and a final sendoff before the Winston Cup tour heads north and beyond for the summer.
Earlier this season, rumors began to fly about the possibility of The Winston moving venues like other all-star sporting events. Besides the initial running at Atlanta in 1985, The Winston has called Lowe’s Motor Speedway home.
“It’s nice for us (to race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway), but not all the teams are located in Charlotte, just the majority of them,” said Robin Pemberton, crew chief for Rusty Wallace. “I’d hate to see them move it. It’s pretty enjoyable to at least stay in your own bed for a couple of weeks. Charlotte is a great facility, it can hold a lot of people and the weather is generally nice.”
While the site change is merely rumor, the timing has been a full-fledged rumble. With the schedule jam-packed already — Kansas City and Chicago were added this season — weekends off have become a commodity. Many drivers would like to have another weekend on the couch.
“If they changed anything, I wouldn’t mind if they looked into the scheduling of The Winston,” says John Andretti. “I think we can combine this race into a regularly scheduled weekend. We could bring a car for the race and then another one for the all-star race and do it in one weekend. I think we could combine this into the Coca-Cola 600 weekend and be able to put on just as spectacular a show for the fans.
“I think having The Winston during the 600 weekend might even be better for the fans,”Andretti added. “For a fan to see both races under the current schedule of events you have to take a long time off work. If you could schedule both the races in the one weekend the fans could get to watch both the races. It’s tough for the fans and it can even get tough for the teams, too.”
NASCAR has attempted to consolidate time this season by doing away with second-round qualifying, thus eliminating one element of the weekend.
“You think that would be total chaos and madness, but if you look at Daytona when we run the Shootout — we’re there for 10 days — but we’re allowed to use two different cars, one for the Shootout and one for the 500,” says Wallace. “A lot of teams do that for The Winston and the 600. I’d like to see ‘em consolidate it a little bit, but I don’t want to see them consolidate it and then go ahead and add another race because we’re still trying to get all these extra cars done.
“You’d have to take three cars to the Charlotte week if you did it that way, so it’s pretty hectic. To be honest with you, it’s really difficult to maintain this schedule.,”Wallace added. “This is the most races, obviously, that we’ve ever run and the fallout remains to be seen by the end of the year when we’re running 20 in a row, and how everybody maintains a good, healthy attitude about the series.
“It remains to be seen how everybody is gonna handle that.”
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