What It’s Like to Attend a NASCAR Race

Swerve off I-85 and turn onto Bruton Smith Boulevard, because it’s race weekend and there’s things y’all gotta pick up first.

Take a quick spin onto Fireball Roberts Road and get some Cheerwine over at the gas station because the temperature says 78 but the sun laughs at you and says “nah man, that sunscreen ain’t gonna protect you one bit” and you need to hydrate.

Hunger can’t wait? Get it smothered, covered and chunked right near over at Waffle House. If it’s meat and three you’re looking for, head over to Jim ‘n’ Nicks for a plate and tea (it’s always sweet in the South). Need something stronger? The Michael Waltrip Tap Room is packed and it’s only 2 p.m. Whole family waiting in the RV lot? Get that Bo’ Box and get back on Bruton, past the dealerships with the Hendrick seal of approval, past the fans in the Chase Elliott gear leaving the hotel, the ones with Kyle Busch or even the ol’ timers with a black and white 3 or the rainbow 24.

It’s Saturday afternoon, the weekend is long and the time is slowin’ down outside the walls of the cathedral in Concord but the noise … that noise will ramp up off Darrell Waltrip Way, don’t you worry one bit.

This is what it feels like to be around the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day Weekend, where the track at Charlotte Motor Speedway may have a different city’s name on it but make no mistake, you are in Concord, North Carolina, and you are in Cabarrus County.

Home to NASCAR History

This spot has one of the longest ties to the old NASCAR, the one that granddaddy remembers fondly. The venue in Concord and Cabarrus County stands as one of those that anybody who’s anybody and anybody who’s wished to be somebody has to challenge, right next to Daytona and Darlington.

For legends to be driving on it, it helps to have a legendary backstory. In Concord, the venue was built in less than a year’s time, a dream sold by a local businessman, Curtis Turner, and a promoter named Bruton Smith who goes down in NASCAR lore.

Dynamite needed to bust open granite? Ka-boom, y’know. Hornets descending upon the site? Buzzworthy, one could say. Random snowstorm? It’ll melt eventually, keep on building.

Oh, and there’s this one; the man who busted up the granite, his name’s W. Owen Flowe. Well, one day as the venue was almost ready — at least as ready as ever gonna’ be — Owen decided he hadn’t been paid what he was owed and was fixin’ to do something ‘bout it. So he went to the track and told Turner and Smith that it was time to pay up.

Now, there are some that still dispute what happened next. Flowe would claim that Smith and Turner threatened to shoot him and others if the work wasn’t finished. Smith not entirely disputes it, admitting that Turner did have a shotgun but insists somebody grabbed the weapon before it became an active participant.

Anyways, the track was done and the inaugural race was run. Barely. And now, who could have imagined the history that would be held? The Coke 600 has been run for 65 years in this spot, where the locals pass down their fandom through generations and tens of thousands pay homage throughout the year.

Through the years the capacity has been like an elevator, as much as 170,000 in the late 1980s and now only 95,000. The venue itself is less a track and more a home to any type of racing you can think of with its clay short track, a dirt track, a drag strip outside the complex and an infield road course used later this year when NASCAR’s Cup Series comes by for the Bank of America “Roval” during the playoffs.

Where Drivers Become Legends

“You think anybody gonna get caught on the interstate with all these state troopers here?”

So says the Uber driver as she crawls toward the track, dozens of police cars with lights on, before you hop off and take a look around.

This is NASCAR in the South, where the air smells like a pit smoker goin’ slow and low, surrounded by people sitting in a lawn chair, drink in hand after a long, deep gulp because you don’t sip ‘round here. On Memorial Day weekend, the RV lot is filled with those who laugh at the idea of air conditioning and fandom means flying the flag with your favorite driver’s number even higher than the U.S. flag.

This is history and legacy and the end to the day known as Motorsports Christmas and there’s a weight in being able to sniff the gas, the BBQ and soak in an experience that only Cabarrus County on this day can deliver.

The Coca-Cola 600 is the longest race on NASCAR’s schedule, a test as much mentally as physically, which is saying something in the North Carolina heat even as the sun starts to set. Starting in the sun and ending in the dark of night until post-race fireworks re-illuminate the sky, NASCAR is the nighttime double shot of whiskey to chase the mimosa starter of F1’s Monaco GP and a beer at the Indianapolis 500.

This is where Dale Earnhardt made his debut in the Cup Series — Sr. and Jr., both. This is where David Pearson outlasted Richard Petty in a race shortened by the nation’s fuel crisis before Petty won years later. This is where Darrell Waltrip won five times (hence the street name). This is where drivers turn into legends; eight men have won this race three times or more in 600 history, all but one of them are Hall of Famers.

Here in the heart of Cabarrus County, this is where almost every Cup Series team still has a presence, the week of the 600 being one of the few chances that some of the workshops are open to the public. This is where the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers and its Earnhardt-adjacent mustached baseball logo — the team from 2001 through 2019 was known as the Intimidators and it’s not hard to figure out why — sit just a short drive from the track with its prototypical Southern downtown walkability, a statue of Earnhardt proudly declaring it his hometown surrounded by immaculately tailored grass off the main stretch.

The Experience of Race Day

So what’s it like on race day? Crawl up Bruton Smith Boulevard on race afternoon and past the RV lots, where a guy waves a sign “You Honk — I Drink,” which he waves with a smile four hours before the green flag and makes you wonder if it sounds less like a boast and more like a very dangerous idea.

There’s plenty of time to kill before it goes racing and that means checking out the fan zone. There’s activations a plenty, some looking to make a buck and some looking to find some shade. NASCAR drivers, just a quick bit before going 200 miles per hour for hours at a time with cars just inches away from a competitor who’d rather wreck ‘ya than lose to ‘ya at the end, take the time to chat with fans whether it be the Ty Gibbs sponsor sit-down or Kyle Busch hanging out at the Explore Cabarrus spot surrounded by dozens of fans.

Inside smells a mix of exhaust and BBQ sauce, both mustard and vinegar, a generous heaping of cornbread and any other fixins’ you can conjure up with red cups as the drink carrier of choice. From the terrace at Turn 1 you see the entire track and the mass of humanity scattered through the infield, where some have rented spots with Winnebago’s, some with a pickup truck with a big ol’ piece of plywood covering the cab and a couple of lawn chairs set up for an elevated view. Fun fact: what you think is grass in the infield is more than just that, it’s a special surface developed to withstand the heat, gas and anything else that could come out the bottom of a car as it skids across without setting the area on fire.

There may be no sport where the experience is as auditory as NASCAR … and that’s even when you have ear plugs in. When that green flag drops, the ground shakes under your feet as the unmistakably primal sound of engines roaring blows your mind. Sit close enough to the track, as you can when with the folks over at Explore Cabarrus, and you get a bit of breeze during the races because that’s when the cars are whipping around, close enough that you can feel small pieces of tires flipping in the air, making one wonder what would happen if there’s a wreck in turn 1 and how the mix of brakes screeching, crowds cheering and metal twisting would feel like because this is NASCAR, where rubbin’ is racing’ and if you ain’t cheating then you ain’t tryin’.

For nearly four hours, fans hear the hypnotic rhythm of cars speeding by, too fast sometimes to see more than a number and the main sponsor (sorry, secondary sponsors). On this night, at a track where legends are made, you see history as Ross Chastain becomes the first person to win the Coke 600 having started at the absolute end of the line. As Chastain does the Polish Victory Lap (so named because of going the opposite direction) and the fireworks explode overhead, there’s a thought that getting back to the hotel will take time, with the near-100,000 people on hand.

But really, not so much. There are the RV lots, and the secondary lots, and people just wanting to hang out into the night and watch the seconds tick by and turn from p.m. to a.m. The racing’s done on the track in Cabarrus County but stay a while, the fans are saying, and relax, make yourself feel at home for a bit longer.