CONCORD, N.C. – It was just past 8 p.m. last Saturday night when I drove by The Dirt Track at Charlotte.
I was on my way home from a nearby restaurant when something suggested I should stop and look around, give the old place a once over before the sun disappeared beyond the horizon.
While driving down Bruton Smith Blvd. toward the pit entrance, I thought I heard Johnny Gibson calling an early World of Outlaws feature that included Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, Mark Kinser and Donny Schatz.
Earlier thunderstorms had cooled the temperature from the high-90s to the mid-70s, and an occasional pass of the wipers was required due a shower that wasn’t much more than a nuisance.
It was a holiday weekend and the adjacent campground was doing a brisk business. I spotted a father and daughter playing pitch and catch in an empty space beside their motorhome, while several youngsters took full advantage of the nearby playground equipment.
Yellow gates with a large stop sign secured the road that race teams utilize to access The Dirt Track’s pit area. The building that houses pit registration was secured, its contents stashed away in preparation for another day.
All the gates at the main entrance were padlocked and the high-tech equipment used to scan digital tickets had been taken elsewhere on the speedway property.
When it opened in May 2000, The Dirt Track at Charlotte was hailed as a multi-million-dollar wonder that would elevate dirt-track racing to unprecedented heights.
That sounded all fine and dandy, but it never happened.
Now, the track spends most of its time just like I found it on this particular Saturday night – completely deserted.
In fact, not a single competitive lap has been turned on the four-tenths-mile dirt oval since Nov. 4, 2023, when Ricky Thornton Jr. won the World of Outlaws late model feature that brought down the curtain on last year’s World of Outlaws World Finals.
In the case of full disclosure, I worked as the senior manager of public relations for Charlotte Motor Speedway from May 2000 until September 2008. My responsibilities included publicity and media relations for all speedway events, including those at The Dirt Track and the 1.5-mile quad-oval. I worked alongside Roger Slack, a young, aggressive promoter who grew up in a racing family.
All these years later, sitting in my car overlooking turn one, I noticed how the numerous parking lot lights cast a yellow glow over the Charlotte Motor Speedway complex. It was getting dark.
Speedway Motorsports spent millions of dollars to build The Dirt Track at Charlotte and millions more to construct a similar sister track at Texas Motor Speedway, but both are now used only a few times each year.
The original concept was for The Dirt Track at Charlotte to host approximately 10 major events each season, spaced roughly a month apart. Early visitors included AMA motorcycles, World of Outlaws sprint cars, monster trucks, USAC sprint cars, various late model series, multiple divisions of modifieds, an assortment of local stock car classes and even a jet-powered outhouse.
Initially, the events run in conjunction with the NASCAR weekends did well at the ticket office. The standalone events, however, were a much tougher sell.
I was never privy to the financials associated with The Dirt Track events, but I was repeatedly told that the cost to simply open the gates was far beyond the total cost of a typical short-track event.
Throw in a bunch of other factors, and here we are. It’s another summer Saturday night and one of the nation’s premier dirt tracks is dark. It will remain that way until Aug. 17 when the silence will be broken by the roar of monster truck engines and the cheers of a large, enthusiastic crowd.
The World Short Track Championship on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 and the World of Outlaws World Finals on Nov. 6-9 are the only racing events on the track’s schedule this season.
I drive by The Dirt Track several times a week and usually don’t pay it much attention. But last Saturday night as fans were being entertained at dirt tracks across the country, something told me I needed to stop and catch up with an old friend.
Finally, I pull out of the parking lot and give the track a parting glance in the rearview mirror. There’s not much traffic and within five minutes I’m pulling into my driveway.
But the 30 minutes or so that I hung around the track and reminisced ended up breaking my heart. On a summer Saturday night that could have been filled with the joy, thrill and excitement of dirt-track racing, The Dirt Track at Charlotte sat silent, dark and deserted. What a shame.