Know Your Track: Charlotte

Charlotte Motor Speedway

Track Name: Charlotte Motor Speedway

           

Nicknames: "The Beast of the Southeast"

Location: Concord, North Carolina

Capacity: 135,000

Date of First Race: June 19, 1960

Layout: Charlotte is a 1.5 mile asphalt "Quad-oval" with two "dog legs" on the front stretch. It's four turns are banked at 24 degrees. This track has a similar layout to Atlanta Motor Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway.

Current Sprint Cup Races:

• May 15, 2015 - The Sprint Showdown, a 60 mile, 40 lap qualifying race. It is a precursor to the All-Star race and is only raced by drivers who have not met the prerequisite to be in the All-Star race. The race is typically run in two 20 lap segments with the winner, runner-up, and fan vote winner transferring to the All-Star race. This is not a points event. This is a Friday night event.
• May 16, 2015 - The Sprint All-Star Race, a 135 mile, 90 lap exhibition race. This race is only open to qualifying drivers (usually winners from the prior season and that current season). The race also is typically broken up into four segments. The winner receives $1 million dollars. This is not a points event. This is a Saturday night event.
• May 24, 2015 - Coca-Cola 600, a 600 mile, 400 lap regular season points race. This is a Sunday night event.
• October 10, 2015 - Bank of America 500, a 501 mile, 334 lap Chase race. This is the first race of the Contender Round of the Chase and the fourth out of ten races overall in the Chase. This is a Saturday night event. 

Most Wins:       

• All-Time: Jimmie Johnson, 7 wins
• Active: Jimmie Johnson, 7 wins
• Latest Winner:
• 2015 Sprint Showdown: Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle
• 2015 Sprint All-Star Race: Denny Hamlin
• 2014 Coca-Cola 600: Jimmie Johnson
• 2014 Bank of America 500: Kevin Harvick

Description: Charlotte Motor Speedway is the unquestioned home of NASCAR and (nearly) all of its teams. Practically every single team in NASCAR, besides Furniture Row Racing in Colorado, runs their shop out of the Charlotte area. Heck, Hendrick Motorsports is just a stones throw from the track. So when the series comes to Charlotte for two consecutive weeks of racing in May, it's needless to say that drivers and teams are happy to be home for awhile. 

That two weeks in May also happens to feature two of NASCAR's premier events, the All-Star race and the longest race in NASCAR, the Coca-Cola 600. Some may argue that the All-Star race hasn't been anything special in recent years, and they may be right, but with the right format changes that race could be the highlight event it once was. And not much more needs to be said about the the Coca-Cola 600. It's one of NASCAR's crown jewel events (along with the Daytona 500, Brickyard 400, and Southern 500) and shares Memorial Day weekend with the historic Indianapolis 500, with drivers occasionally running both events as Kurt Busch did last year. The track also host the only night race in the Chase during its October race weekend.

Racing here in recent years hasn't been lauded as the best around, possibly due to the length of its races where drivers get strung out and passing is hard to come by. But give it a few more years of surface wear and there's no reason racing can't be similar to how it is at Texas.

Notable Races:

• 2005 Coca-Cola 600 - Jimmie Johnson executes a last lap pass of Bobby Labonte to win his third consecutive race at Charlotte. Johnson would later win the fall race that year, winning four straight races at the track. That was also former champion Labonte's last great shot a scoring a race win, something he hasn't done since 2003.

Fun Facts: Charlotte partnered with Panasonic to build the world's largest video screen on the backstretch in 2010. That record would later be broken by Texas Motor Speedway.