NASCAR cancels three Cup Series races on 2020 schedule

NASCAR has announced the cancellations of three races which were previously on the 2020 Cup Series schedule, including two at tracks without any other race dates.

After NASCAR added three races which were not previously on the 2020 Cup Series schedule to create an 11-race span with four races beginning on Sunday, May 17, it was inevitable that the schedule would end up losing races that were originally on it.

With eight races postponed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the projected race total dropped from 36 to 28. The additions of these three races brought that total back up to 31, but none of the eight tracks that saw their races wiped off the schedule were included in these additional races.

So that effectively left five spots open with eight tracks needing to reschedule. Even if all eight had ended up back on the schedule, three tracks would still have ended up losing race dates.

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NASCAR has confirmed now that three tracks are indeed set to lose race dates, and they have confirmed that these three tracks are Richmond Raceway, Sonoma Raceway and Chicagoland Speedway.

Richmond Raceway is set to lose the race that had been scheduled to take place on Sunday, April 19. The track is still scheduled to host a playoff race during the round of 16 on Saturday, September 12.

But Sonoma Raceway and Chicagoland Speedway do not have other race dates on the calendar. The former had been scheduled to host a race on Sunday, June 14 while the latter had been scheduled to host a race the following Sunday, June 21.

“Due to the current pandemic, NASCAR has faced several difficult decisions, including realigning race dates from several race tracks,” NASCAR stated. “These decisions were made following thorough collaboration with local and state government officials from across the country, including the areas of the affected race tracks. We thank all our fans for their support, and we look forward to our return to racing.”

There is no word on any other schedule changes yet, but NASCAR has stated that they will be released in the near future. NASCAR has only released a four-race schedule that spans from Sunday, May 17 to Wednesday, May 27 and includes two races at Darlington Raceway and two races at Charlotte Motor Speedway, including the initially scheduled Coca-Cola 600.

These two races at Darlington Raceway are set to serve as the replacement races for the races at Richmond Raceway and Chicagoland Speedway while the other race at Charlotte Motor Speedway is set to serve as the replacement race for the race at Sonoma Raceway.

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Aside of Richmond Raceway, the seven tracks which saw their races wiped off the schedule earlier this year are Atlanta Motor Speedway, Homestead-Miami Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway, Dover International Speedway and Martinsville Speedway. Finding new dates for each of these seven tracks would result in a 36-race schedule.

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