NASCAR’s rumored continuation date and track
By Asher Fair
Darlington Raceway has been rumored to resume the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season on Sunday, May 17, which would be 10 weeks after the most recent race at Phoenix Raceway.
When Team Penske’s Joey Logano took the checkered flag just ahead of Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick to win the fourth race of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season at Phoenix Raceway back on Sunday, March 8, not many people saw a multi-month stoppage looming.
Yet here we are at the end of April, and there has been no real-life action since that race, which was now nearly two months ago.
The next eight races on the schedule were scheduled to take place at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Richmond Raceway, Talladega Superspeedway, Dover International Speedway and Martinsville Speedway.
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All eight races were postponed indefinitely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
NASCAR has still not released an updated 2020 schedule, although they have made clear that their goal is still to run all 36 races that were on the initial schedule.
The season is scheduled to resume on Sunday, May 24 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But as expected, this is subject to change. This change, however, could very well be a change in the form of the season getting back underway earlier than initially anticipated, and at a track that isn’t actually scheduled to host a Cup Series race until the playoffs in September.
Darlington Raceway has been rumored as the resumption track for the 2020 season by several highly reputable sources, and the target date for this previously unscheduled race has been set at Sunday, May 17.
NASCAR has not publicly confirmed nor denied these rumors, although they did release a schedule to the teams that included this event.
The Cup Series is scheduled to be at Charlotte Motor Speedway that weekend for the All-Star Race on Saturday, May 16, although the idea of restarting the season with a non-points-paying race appears to be out of the question, as this rumor would indicate.
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Given the situation we are in with this pandemic, it really makes no sense to speculate as to what may happen next. But with that in mind, the fact that so many sources are leaning toward Darlington Raceway hosting the next NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday, May 17, with several even pointing to the rumor as a done deal via a schedule that NASCAR privately released, could mean that this is a lot more than speculation. Time will tell.