INDIANAPOLIS – Racing will continue at Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville thanks to Track Enterprises and Bob Sargent.
Sargent has entered into an agreement with city officials to promote a 10-race schedule of events at the historic .596-mile asphalt oval located in Nashville, Tenn. Seven of those races will be events for weekly competitors and three will be special events.
The news comes after the fair board voted to end its contract with Formosa Productions after the group failed to pay its outstanding debt to the city.
In recent months there has been an increased interest in Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville from Speedway Motorsports Inc., which is operated by O. Bruton Smith and the Smith family, to bring NASCAR back to the Nashville market. There are also plans to build a soccer stadium on the property next to he fairgrounds track.
Sargent said the long-term future of the speedway and his involvement at the track will depend on what happens with the soccer stadium and NASCAR.
“We already had a relationship. We’d been there for five years running the ARCA national series,” Sargent explained Saturday at the PRI Trade Show in Indianapolis. “We had a good relationship with the fairgrounds and I think we were always in talks about future. Of course the soccer stadium is big news in Nashville and the SMI interest is big news. We just wanted to make sure the facility stayed going while all this is going on.
“I think the future, short term, 2020 is solid. We would like to continue going at the facility in our role. A lot of that will depend on how the NASCAR and/or the soccer develops.”
The first special event on the schedule is a triple threat of events on May 2-3. The ARCA Menards Series East division will compete at the track on May 2. Also on the schedule for the weekend is the fifth edition of the North/South Super Late Model Challenge, which will feature a tri-sanctioned super late model event featuring the ARCA/CRA Super Series, CARS Tour and Southern Super Series. The JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour will also be in action as part of the weekend.
The JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour will return to Nashville for a headlining event on July 18 when the annual Masters of the Pros event moves to Nashville after most recently being held at Memphis Int’l Raceway.
Lastly, the 36th edition of the All-American 400 super late model race will be run Oct. 31-Nov. 1.
The addition of Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville to the Track Enterprises family adds another piece to an already busy and complicated schedule for Sargent, who promotes racing events across the United States with a number of different sanctioning bodies.
“We do around 80 events in several different states with a lot of different sanctioning bodies,” Sargent said. “This is really not unlike a lot of the other ones we do. We go in and we try to make a really good facility, good events, customer relations, participant relations, just trying to make the whole experience good from the racer standpoint, the fan standpoint, the sponsor standpoint and the media standpoint.
“We’ll work very hard on all of that.”
Sargent said he hopes to make a decision regarding a point fund for the seven weekly races on the schedule in the near future.
“It’s a little early, this has come together very quickly,” Sargent said. “We’re finishing all of that between now and the first of the year. We’re kind of telling everybody to stay tuned to all of the websites, social media. We’ll have more announcements as we get them and probably a larger gathering or press conference in Nashville.”
A full schedule of events for the upcoming season at Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville will be announced in the near future.