NASCAR’s Scheduling Realignment

Significant changes were made to the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup series schedule, which was referred to as realignment. At a June 2003 press conference, Bill France Jr stunned the audience by announcing a controversial and sweeping set of scheduling changes for the 2004 NASCAR season. This realignment would address lagging ticket sales at certain tracks as well as the necessity of constantly re-scheduling some races due to inclement weather. The media identified two southern raceways, North Carolina Speedway and Darlington Raceway, as being affected by the changes. The two facilities had difficulty selling out their events and both faced weather problems. In North Carolina, the rain had consistently forced races having to be rescheduled to Mondays and fans just couldn’t attend.

The name Realignment 2004 was used to refer to the official change to the NASCAR schedule announced in June 2003 during an event in Michigan. The list of changes wasn’t long, but it was massive in impact. Some tracks were battered by the affects.

Back in June 1997, Jeff Gordon won the inaugural Winston Cup race at the California Speedway. The proximity to Los Angeles immediately created NASCARs largest market almost overnight with throngs of fans flocking there from the Los Angeles area.

With the NASCAR schedule realignment, the Darlington’s Mountain Dew Southern 500 race that normally ran on Labor Day weekend would be changed to November for the 2004 season. That change made room for a switch at North Carolina Speedway. The November the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 race had 100 miles added and its name changed to the Pop Secret 500. The race was slotted into Fontana and moved from November to Labor Day weekend. These changes meant that NBC would cover it live during prime time as it ran during the evening.

NASCARs announcement for the 2009 schedule, announced on August 19 2008, brought more major changes.

Talladega’s fall event was changed to a later date near Halloween usurping Atlanta Motor Speedways fall event. That meant several scheduling changes occurred. Several races were shifted around in order to best take advantage of the markets. These were huge change sent fans scrambling to get appropriate vacation time.

- The Nationwide Series dropped the Mexico City road race and a new race was scheduled in August at the Iowa Speedway.

- The Montreal Sprint Cup race was moved from a fixed date to an open weekend around August 30.

- Labor Day became the new date for The Sprint Cups only Atlanta race that had previously been run in March.

- Chicagoland Speedway had a Camping World Truck series event added during the Indy Racing League week.