Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports
No Night Race On “The Western Swing”
Add us as a preferred source on GoogleAll three tracks on the “western swing,” Las Vegas, Phoenix and Auto Club Speedway have lights. Why doesn’t at least one of them have a night race? For logistical reasons related to the material on the previous page, the logical place for a night race would be Auto Club Speedway. This way, teams could have an 18-hour (approximately) earlier start on the long ride home than if they had to stay until Sunday.
The atmosphere and energy of a night race is so much more exciting than the same event held during the day. There isn’t a tangible reason why, it just always seems so. I’ll take exciting over mundane any day.
I’ve never bought the argument that for a national touring series like Sprint Cup to have night races would pull fans away from supporting their local short-tracks. Sure, it might impact attendance at a given local track on that one night when there is a Cup race nearby, but that’s only going to impact the local venue once during the season. The weeks leading up to, and after, the Cup race would be unaffected. I will believe this until proven wrong.