"The Legend Lives On" indeed, as for the first time in 30 years, North Wilkesboro Speedway hosted a NASCAR Cup Series points race this past Sunday evening, and it was a race that had a true old-school NASCAR feel to it from start to finish.
The four-turn, 0.625-mile (1.006-kilometer) North Wilkesboro, North Carolina oval had already become an annual stop on the Cup Series schedule again following its revitalization, but from 2023 to 2025, it only hosted the All-Star Race exhibition in mid-May.
That revitalization reached a new level when Team Penske's Joey Logano became the first driver since Jeff Gordon in 1996 to win a points race at the iconic venue. But it also came at the expense of another historic Cup Series venue.
Dover won't host a Cup Series points race in 2026
Dover Motor Speedway opened in 1969 and hosted one race that year and the next. For 49 consecutive seasons from 1971 to 2019, it hosted two race weekends per season, and in 2020, it hosted a doubleheader.
The four-turn, 1.0-mile (1.609-kilometer) high-banked "Monster Mile" oval in Dover, Delaware lost its second race date in 2021, but it remained on the schedule with one points race each season from then through 2025.
Dover's race date was shifted around more than once, and it moved from April in 2024 to July in 2025. So Dover's race weekend was effectively given to North Wilkesboro in 2026.
Dover remained on the schedule, but for the first time in its 57-year existence, it will not host a points race in 2026. Instead, it hosted the All-Star Race back in mid-May.
Whether or not it event returns as the host of the exhibition race beyond this season is yet to be determined, although it did host points races for both the Craftsman Truck Series and the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series that weekend.
Dover was one of 2025's four tracks removed from the 36-race points-paying portion of the 2026 Cup Series schedule.
Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez turned out to be a one-off, with the new street course on Naval Base Coronado taking its place in June, and Independence Day Weekend's Chicago Street Course race was replaced by the first Chicagoland Speedway race since 2019.
In a late offseason move, NASCAR also made the decision to revert back to a postseason that features exclusively oval races, which hasn't been true since 2017. October's annual Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval playoff race was replaced by a second race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in what is set to be NASCAR's first 10-race "Chase" since 2013.
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