Kentucky Nascar

It’s taken a long, long time but Kentucky is finally under starters order: it’s very own Nascar Sprint Cup Series event.

The chequered flag waves on July 11, promising a huge Saturday night party, luring 116,000 petrol-heads and race fans to the vast Kentucky Speedway stadium tucked into the countryside at Sparta, between Louisville and Cincinnatti.

The fabled Sprint Cup Series with Nascar (the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing), as popular in America as Grand Prix in Europe, pinballs to and fro right across America, from the immortal Daytona 500 race to the fabled Indianapolis circuit and Talladega Superspeedway to oval tracks from Vegas in the southwest to New Hampshire in the northeast. Now Kentucky is on the map.

Huge crowds flock to the Nascar events. Why? Imagine deafening noise, the heavy whiff of petrol and smoke, and the spectacular scenes from grandstand seats jacked-up as high as a tower block, watching the souped-up, precision-engineered Fords and Chevvies battle it out at speeds of more than 200mph over as many as 500 laps for two to three hours, hugging and tucking into rivals’ slipstreams just waiting to pounce.

As Nascar itself puts it: “Your heart will pound. Your seat will shake. Your vision will blur.” They are not wrong.

Don’t Believe us, then take a look at this, possibly the craziest ever finish to a Nascar race, as if straight out of the Will Ferrell spoof Talladega Nights, with poor old Nascar maestro Carl Edwards playing the role of Ricki Bobby.

As with all American sporting events, it’s more than just racing. It’s an experience. A true happening: be it mingling with the crowds in the towering grandstands or in the traditional car park barbecue, enjoying the campground picnics, having a beer and hotdog by the trackside or camping for days like thousands of other devotees in Kentucky Speedway’s sprawling 200 acres. Soon there’ll even be a casino.

If you can’t make the Sprint Cup, October sees just as racey, just as raw an event at Kentucky Speedway, with the IndyCar competitions, the American version of Formula 1.

Kentucky is the first new track on the Sprint Cup Series since 2001, when Kansas and Chicagoland held their inaugural races. Kentucky’s gain is Atlanta’s loss, surrendering one of its two races, part of a big shake-up in the schedules to reward keen newcomers such as Kentucky Speedway.

The track had tried for what seemed aeons to lure the grand Sprint Cup Series to its newly developed oval at Sparta. It won Nascar Truck events and a Nationwide cup event, but it always seemed to miss out on the grand prize: the Sprint Cup.

Why? Well, it didn’t help that the granddaddy of race venues, Indianapolis, was seen as too near, just three hours’ drive away; there was the huge monsoon rains for the inaugural Truck race which turned the circuit into a mudbath, prompting traffic jams all the way down Interstate 71 (shades of Silverstone Grand Prix in 2000?), and there were several “unhelpful” legal barriers always frustrating the prize.

Now it’s finally happened and Kentucky is counting down to the big night. Very soon, hopes Kentucky Speedway, there’ll be a second race. Watch this space.

For tickets, click here. For more informaion on the Sprint Cup Series click here and for Nascar click here.