SPORTS
bring its annual awards banquet downtown last year and return races to the Superspeedway. “We are excited to bring NASCAR racing back to Nashville, a place where the passion for our sport runs deep,” NASCAR President Steve Phelps said in June when announcing the 20212024 races. “The Nashville market is a vital one for our sport.” Bringing Cup Series racing to the Superspeedway — “I thought that train had left the station,” Woody says — could also prove to be a catalyst for the region’s other prominent track. The cityowned Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway held 42 Cup Series from 1958 to 1984, the last one a Geoff Bodine win. Nearly 35 years later, executives of Speedway Motorsports Inc. — which owns eight of the sport’s best-known tracks, including Bristol Motor Speedway — approached the city with a $60 million public-private spending plan to upgrade and expand the historic 0.6-mile track in Wedgewood-Houston, which first held a race in 1904. The SMI plan would look to tie the track’s infrastructure to that of the adjacent Nashville SC stadium being built. Mayor John Cooper has said he is looking for a “holistic” redevelopment of the entire Fairgrounds property but hasn’t committed to SMI’s plan in any way. “It’s huge because it would be unique in showing NASCAR’s commitment to Nashville,” McCabe says of SMI’s proposal. “The fact that NASCAR would
be willing to go to two different tracks in the same market with two different ownership groups just shows you how important this city is to them. “If fans want this to happen, they need to go out to the Superspeedway. That makes that decision that much easier once the work on the Fairgrounds that needs to be done is done. NASCAR would be like, ’Sure, we’ll hold two different races at two different places because the fans want it.’” Should their plan come to fruition — and that’s a big if given Metro’s finances and the overall economic picture — SMI executives would be expected to first bring Xfinity and Truck Series races to the Fairgrounds. But an investment as big as the $60 million being floated would only really pay off with a Cup race. And Woody says that’s a very long shot. “I don’t think the Fairgrounds has a prayer of getting a Cup race,” he says. “It’s too old, it’s land-locked, surrounded by schools and neighborhoods and would take millions and millions of dollars to get access roads in there, so the Fairgrounds never had a chance to get a Cup race back, in my opinion. “They had Cup races until 1984 until NASCAR pulled the races then. It was almost impossible back then when the Fairgrounds only seated about 20,000 people. It was a great track in its era, and it’s still a great track for local racing. But in terms of hosting a Cup race, it doesn’t have a chance.”
Pinnacle Financial Partners would like to congratulate Jane Allen and the 2020 Most Powerful Women honorees.
JANE ALLEN CEO, Nashville Entrepreneur Center
Pinnacle Financial Partners are proud to be EC Partners.
