There’s no more waiting through the summer for NASCAR to release its race schedule.
As part of the five-year sanctioning agreements that tracks struck with NASCAR in October, NASCAR’s schedules for its three national touring series are now expected to come out significantly earlier each year than before, sources said, an important development for industry stakeholders such as teams, sponsors, media partners and even competing series.
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New sanctioning agreements with tracks spell out a tighter window for scheduling.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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Tracks that play host to NASCAR events — including those owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc., International Speedway Corp. and independents — now need to request any date change by early April, sources said, whereas previously they typically had through the summer to make such requests.
NASCAR couldn’t be reached for comment by press time. But in an earnings call last week with investors, William Brooks, vice chairman and chief financial officer of SMI, discussed the development.
In response to a question about whether SMI is eyeing any changes to its schedule next year, Brooks said, “Application needs to be made pretty quickly [now]; by April 1, if I remember — some time in April. … My understanding is that the actual schedule for 2017 will come available a lot earlier than historically.”
In recent years, NASCAR’s national series schedules were released between late August and early October. Now they are expected to come out in early summer.
“That’s big for everybody, especially as we’re trying to do deals with local hotel groups and taking a look at what’s going on,” said an executive at a NASCAR-sanctioned track. “If we can get dates out there on the schedule really early, when other people are looking at what’s going on in our market, they won’t just dump stuff on top of us. So the earlier the better for all of us.”
Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman & Co., which owns IndyCar, agreed that the change will be good for his series, adding that IndyCar is now looking at getting its schedule out earlier as well.
“I think trying to go earlier is a no-brainer, so it’s something we’ve talked about for a couple years,” Miles said from St. Petersburg, where IndyCar’s 2016 schedule kicked off last weekend. “Internally, we’ve been saying we’d like to have it out in August, so that’s the goal — but the later deadline would be the end of the season, Sonoma [in mid-September].”
