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Track has hosted 2 NASCAR Cup Series events annually since 1959, except during COVID-shortened 2020 season
By Tom Lappas
onAugust 26, 2024
Richmond Raceway removed more than half of its 103,000 seats between the mid-2000s and 2018, replacing some of them several years ago with a new RV park (pictured, center and right) and a party deck (upper left). (Contributed image)
Richmond Raceway may be losing its first NASCAR race weekend in 2025.
NASCAR officials have awarded NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series races next year to Mexico City, they announced Tuesday. A tentative schedule for 2025 that shows the two races in Mexico City (June 14 and 15) also shows just one Cup Series race at Richmond, Jordan Bianchi wrote in The Athletic Monday, citing multiple industry sources. (NASCAR has not yet released its official 2025 schedule.)
The loss of one race weekend would mark the end of an era for Richmond Raceway – which has hosted two NASCAR Cup Series events annually since 1959 (with the exception of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of RR’s first scheduled race) – and potentially the beginning of another for Mexico City’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez road course, where the two new June races will be held. The Cup Series is NASCAR’s top level of competition, while the Xfinity Series is its secondary tier of competition.
Officials at Richmond Raceway and with Henrico County and regional tourism organizations have been at least a little leery of losing a race weekend since the turn of the century, as new race tracks have taken shape nationally and NASCAR officials have sought to expand the sport’s in-person reach to new markets. Tracks in Nashville, Tennessee (which opened in 2001), Kansas (2001) and Iowa (2006) and road courses in Austin, Texas (2012) and Chicago (2023) this year are combining to host six of the 36 Cup Series events.
About 15 years ago, county and local officials began making public appeals for the public to support the two race weekends by purchasing tickets to help ensure that the track would retain both of its races – and to ensure that the region would continue to benefit from their economic impact. A 2009 study by the Washington Economics Group concluded that every race weekend in Richmond created nearly $169 million in economic impact for the region, while another study at about the same time by the racetrack estimated that each race was worth about $42 million in tax revenue (including about $18 million that went directly to Henrico and other nearby localities).
Richmond’s reputation as the “Action Track” and its signature night racing combined to help it sell out 33 consecutive Cup Series races, from the early 1990s until September 2008. The track also earned a prominent spot as the host of the final regular season race (leading up to the beginning of the annual Cup Series playoffs) from 2004 to 2017. In 2018, it debuted a new $30-million infield layout and other upgrades to enhance the experience of fans.
This year, Richmond was one of 12 tracks scheduled to host two Cup Series races; the others are Daytona International Speedway, Atlanta Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Phoenix Raceway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Martinsville Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, Darlington Raceway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway and Kansas Speedway.
But attendance at many NASCAR races, including those at Richmond, has declined in recent years, though NASCAR (a privately owned entity) does not regularly release attendance figures except to announce sellouts. As recently as the mid-2000s, Richmond drew more than 100,000 people for its Cup Series events. But the track eventually removed its backstretch grandstands, and a 2019 report from its owner (International Speedway Corporation) noted that its seating had been slashed to just 51,000.
Richmond Raceway had become known for its Saturday night racing, which made it increasingly unique during a time when most races took place during the day. But in an effort to televise races when it thought more people were likely to watch, NASCAR has yoyoed the track’s races back and forth between daytime and nighttime starts since 2016. The spring race was held during the day in 2016 and 2017, then returned under the lights for two years, moved back to daytime in 2021 (following its absence during the COVID-shortened 2020 season) and then was back under the lights (along with the August race) this year.
The raceway, built in 1946 as a half-mile track and later renovated in 1988 to its current 0.75-mile design, is the third-oldest existing track that has hosted NASCAR events but the oldest that has hosted Cup Series races regularly. (The Milwaukee Mile, which opened in 1903, never has hosted such a race, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway didn’t host its first until 1994.)
Despite the decline in in-person attendance at RR, the Richmond region routinely ranks among the top five nationally in NASCAR race television viewership.
