MOORESVILLE, N.C. — All three NASCAR national touring schedules were released on Wednesday afternoon and later in the day NASCAR’s Ben Kennedy met with the media.
Kennedy is NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing development and strategy, and one of his main duties is creating these schedules.
There were not any international events included on next year’s schedule, but Kennedy explained the sanctioning body continues to explore global expansion particularly in North America.
“As we think about international venues in general, we still are bullish about finding our way either north of the border, whether that be in Montreal or Toronto or another market, or south of the border down into Mexico,” Kennedy said. “As we’ve mentioned in the past, we want to bring our NASCAR Cup Series there at some point.
“We think it’s important for us to get outside of the United States with our series in some way, shape or form, so that’s something we’re going to keep our pulse on as we think about 2025 and beyond.”
While there are no dirt-track races on any of the three schedules, Kennedy maintains that NASCAR has not closed the door on that type of racing.
“We’re certainly open to dirt racing, whether it be with our Cup Series, Xfinity Series or Craftsman Truck Series,” Kennedy said. “Something we’re going to continue to consider. That said, I think after we’ve seen racing on the dirt at Bristol play out for the past few years and hearing some of the fan feedback, we felt like it was an opportunity for us to shake things up a bit, move back to the concrete surface in the spring, and move back to all asphalt and concrete tracks for ’24.
“I think that said, as we think about what the future looks like, dirt racing does have a unique place in motorsports,” he continued. “You think of a lot of our drivers, they came from dirt racing. You think of some of the best racing that I’ve personally seen, it’s on dirt. Do I think there’s going to be a dirt race sometime in the future? I think so.
“What that track looks like or what the time is, we’ll see, but it’s something we’re going to keep our pulse on for sure.”
One of the key factors NASCAR had to navigate in creating the schedule for next season is balancing a break in the schedule (July 21-Aug. 11) because of NBC’s coverage of the summer Olympics.
It indirectly led to Darlington Raceway’s Southern 500 becoming the final race of the regular season on Labor Day weekend.
“Next year with us taking two weeks during the Olympics and naturally moving the end of our season back one week shifts that, and we had a lot of conversations about does Daytona continue to stay as a regular season and do you swap it with Darlington,” Kennedy explained.
“We felt like Darlington on Labor Day weekend and being that race is something that’s core to us and something that’s special to our fans, so it’s something we wanted to keep in place and really test out as we think about for 2024, seeing that it is a little bit different.
“I know that ’25 is going to look different,” Kennedy continued. “Naturally we’ll be in our new media rights agreement, so it won’t be an Olympic year, so I think the schedule overall will have a lot of variability to it as we think about ’25. Does that mean we’ll be back at Daytona? Potentially.
“Does that mean Daytona is a regular season cutoff race? Potentially. We’re going to look at all scenarios, and part of it will also be looking at seeing how Darlington is as a cutoff race for the regular season.”
Kennedy acknowledged that NBC and FOX, which will be in the final year of their rights contracts next season, play a large role in scheduling.
“As you think about the layout of the schedule, a lot of that is driven from our conversations with them and programming and times, whether it’s an afternoon race, a primetime race, a Saturday night race, where a lot of our windows are,” Kennedy said. “They certainly have a very big voice at the table.
“That said, we also have a lot of voices to hear from, so our fans are probably No. 1 on that list. Broadcast partners are high on the list. Our teams and drivers are high on the list. Our partners are high on the list.
“There are a lot of folks that are certainly weighing in as we think about these scheduling changes, and it’s incumbent upon us to take in all that data and information and feedback, try to make the best calculated decisions as we think about rolling out the next schedule.”