by Graham Heeps
11 October 2018
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Daytona, Florida is where NASCAR was formed, but North Carolina is stock car racing’s spiritual home.
Most of the current teams are based there, as are the technical centers of Ford and NASCAR itself, and there is motorsports history at every turn.
The area encompassing Charlotte and Cabarrus County to the city’s northeast, which includes Concord, is rich in museums and other sites of interest for race fans, most of them free to visit. Join us on the trail of the NASCAR greats… PHOTO CREDIT: Visit Cabarrus
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NASCAR Hall of Fame, Charlotte
Let’s begin in Charlotte itself. The NASCAR Hall of Fame and Museum is owned by the city, licensed by NASCAR and operated by the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority. Its 86,500sq ft of exhibits serve as NASCAR’s official museum, containing the Hall of Fame, theater, a race transporter, race car displays and exhibitions. The facility opened in 2010.
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NASCAR Glory Road
Inside the Hall of Fame, the banked Glory Road showcases 18 historic race cars and provides information on 40 of NASCAR’s most famous tracks. Pictured here are Bill Elliott’s Budweiser Ford Thunderbird, the Chevrolet Monte Carlos of Dale Earnhardt Sr and Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch’s M&Ms Toyota Camry and a Chevrolet SS of seven-time Cup champion, Jimmie Johnson.
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2019 Hall of Fame Inductees
Each year, five legendary figures from NASCAR’s history are inducted into the Hall of Fame, chosen fom a list of 20 nominees by a 58-person voting panel and a fan vote. The class of 2019, the tenth selection since voting began, will comprise 1992 Daytona 500 winner Davey Allison, four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon, 1992 Cup champion Alan Kulwicki and two of the sport’s most recognizable team owners, Jack Roush and Roger Penske.
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Charlotte Motor Speedway
The traditional home of NASCAR’s All-Star Race as well as two regular Cup races per season, the vast Charlotte Motor Speedway complex (which is actually in Concord) covers some 2,000 acres and holds 89,000 race fans. Tours are available daily.
The 1.5-mile, 24° banked oval was built in 1959. Since then, a dirt track and the zMAX Dragway have been added. The most recent change came with the construction of the ‘Roval’. This part-oval, part-road course layout delivered a spectacular first NASCAR Cup race in September 2018, when Ryan Blaney took the win after Jimmie Johnson spun into leader Martin Truex Jr at the final chicane.
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Chevrolet Monte Carlo (1987)
The opportunity to visit NASCAR race shops and team museums is a huge bonus for anyone attending an event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Roush Fenway Racing has a museum and race shop viewing area that’s just a 10-minute drive away while the Hendrick Motorsports Museum is even closer.
The free-admission Hendrick museum is packed with historic cars, including the #25 Chevy Monte Carlo from 1987, shown at the front of this line-up. Driver Tim Richmond took his final NASCAR victory in the car at Riverside that year. Later, it was re-skinned as a black, Exxon-sponsored Lumina for use in the 1990 Paramount Pictures movie Days of Thunder, but has now been restored to its original state.
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Chevrolet Lumina - Days of Thunder (1990)
Team owner Rick Hendrick acted as a technical consultant to the producers of Days of Thunder. As part of the filming process, this Lumina in the Hendrick museum was driven by Tom Cruise – playing race driver, Cole Trickle – during practice for the NASCAR Cup race at Phoenix in 1989. Actual race footage was captured that weekend by Bobby Hamilton driving another Hendrick-prepared Lumina.
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Tom Cruise letter
Tom Cruise had known Rick Hendrick for several years before filming of the movie began, having been introduced to Hendrick by his Color of Money co-star, Paul Newman. Later, Cruise would narrate a TV movie telling the story of Hendrick’s team.
This letter thanking Hendrick for his contribution to the promotion of Days of Thunder is part of a collection of memorabilia from the filming displayed in the Hendrick museum.
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Chevrolet Monte Carlo (1989)
NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip, now a broadcaster for Fox Sports, joined Hendrick Motorsports in 1987 to create the #17 ‘Tide Ride’, one of the sport’s most famous paint schemes.
Waltrip won nine races in four seasons with Hendrick, including the 1989 Daytona 500, his only victory in NASCAR’s signature event, in the Monte Carlo picture here.
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Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS (2002)
The partnership between sponsor Lowe’s, Hendrick Motorsports and driver Jimmie Johnson will come to an end this year after 18 seasons. This 2002 Monte Carlo SS, chassis number 48-202, is one of the most successful cars of a combination that delivered seven Cup championships. The chassis recorded six wins over four seasons before being retired in 2005. Two of those came in 2004 with the ‘Always in our Hearts’ hood decal shown here, in memory of the victims of an airplane accident of October that year.
A Beechcraft owned by the team crashed in Virginia, killing all on board including the brother of Rick Hendrick, John Hendrick, John's two daughters, and Ricky Hendrick, Rick's 24-year-old son, who had himself started a NASCAR race career.
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Chevrolet Monte Carlo T-Rex (1997)
At the All-Star Race in 1997, Jeff Gordon’s regular DuPont ‘rainbow’ scheme – shown on the car behind – was modified to promote Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios. Dubbed ‘T-Rex’, the car was a radical design that generated underbody downforce when the nose pitched down in a corner.
Despite qualifying 19th, Gordon won the race at a canter. T-Rex was quickly extinct, however. Post-race, NASCAR officials advised the team not to race the nominally legal car again, and quickly closed the loopholes in the rulebook that it had exploited.
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Hendrick Motorsports reception
Hendrick’s reception area and four race shops are also open to viewing by visiting fans. The reception area contains cars, trophies and memorabilia from an organization that at the time of writing had won 251 NASCAR Cup Series races and 12 Drivers’ championships since its debut in 1984.
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Hendrick pitstop practice
Midweek at the Hendrick and Roush team campuses, fans can often watch pit-crews practice for the upcoming races. At Hendrick, a test car circles around a parking lot behind the museum before stopping under the canopy for a tire change. The crew’s performance is then analyzed on a video screen.
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Dodge Charger R/T (1970)
It’s not a museum, but a visit to Streetside Classics in Concord – just across the street from Chip Ganassi Racing – is a must for car enthusiasts. The huge, 50,000sq ft showroom houses around 260 classic cars that are for sale on consignment by one of the US’s largest classic car dealerships. At the time of our visit, the Dodge Charger R/T General Lee replica pictured was selling for US$52,000. Streetside is open Tuesday to Saturday.
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Car Town in Kannapolis
To cater for the thousands of race fans who descend on the area every year, the city of Kannapolis in Cabarrus County created the Dale Trail. Kannapolis was the hometown of Dale Earnhardt Sr and the Trail explores 19 locations that tell the story of his life.
Stop 6 on the Trail is Car Town, the Kannapolis neighborhood that was Earnhardt’s childhood home, where the streets have names like V-8, Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge. PHOTO CREDIT: Visit Cabarrus
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Dale Earnhardt Plaza in Kannapolis
A park on the corner of Main St and West B St in Kannapolis is dedicated to the memory of Earnhardt, who died at Daytona in February 2001, at age 49. Its centerpiece is a 9ft bronze statue of The Intimidator that faces south so that the sun is always on his face. The statue sits on a pedestal with seven granite sections, one each for Earnhardt’s record-tying tally of Cup championships. PHOTO CREDIT: Visit Cabarrus
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Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 (1980)
Dale Earnhardt Sr won his first Cup championship in 1980 at the wheel of blue-and-yellow #2 cars sponsored by record company boss and politician Mike Curb – an Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 (pictured) and a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
Both are displayed in the free-to-enter Curb Motorsports museum in Kannapolis along with the Winston Cup trophy and Earnhardt’s race suit and helmet.
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Pontiac Grand Prix (1984)
Richard Petty is another high-profile NASCAR driver with connections to Curb, who owned Petty’s ride in the 1984 and 1985 seasons. This Pontiac Grand Prix took ‘The King’ to his 199th career victory at Dover in 1984. The car is identical to the one in which Petty scored his 200th and final victory, at Daytona later the same year. That machine was donated to the Smithsonian in Washington at the request of President Reagan.
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Dallara-Chevrolet IndyCar
There are single-seaters in the Curb museum, too. Curb-Agajanian-Beck Motorsports fielded the blue-and-white, GM-powered Dallara for Billy Boat in the 2001 and 2002 IRL/IndyCar seasons. The best results came at Nashville, where Boat finished second in 2001 and took pole position the following year.
Elsewhere in the museum are Curb-owned cars driven by Tom Sneva and the late Dan Wheldon, who won the 2011 Indy 500 with Bryan Herta Autosport and Curb-Agajanian.
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Dale Earnhardt, Inc
Thirteen miles west of Kannapolis on the road to Mooresville is the home to Dale Earnhardt, Inc, the business he and wife Teresa founded in 1980. DEI no longer fields race cars but supports other teams through its test and development facilities, manages the considerable Earnhardt licensing activities and oversees a charitable foundation. Visitors can view cars and memorabilia from his career in a showroom on-site.
In nearby Mooresville, front-running Ford team, Penske Racing has an elevated, 330-foot fan walk to view the race shop, and a retail store. PHOTO CREDIT: Visit Cabarrus
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Joe Gibbs Racing
Heading south from Mooresville, 20 minutes back toward Charlotte, lies the final stop on our tour. Huntersville is the home of another of modern NASCAR’s powerhouse teams: Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR).Toyota entered NASCAR competition in 2004 but it was JGR’s switch to Toyotas in 2008, the same year that Kyle Busch joined the team, that was pivotal in making the car a regular winner. Visitors can view the race shop and pick up merchandise at the JGR facility; the team also holds a Fan Fest and car show each October.
USEFUL LINKS
NASCAR Hall of Fame, Charlotte NC
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