“How Do We Balance This?” – NASCAR Boss on Avoiding “30 Race Road Course” Schedule Amid Foreign Interest to Host Races

Recently, NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Steve O’Donnell appeared on the Stacking Pennies podcast. NASCAR driver Corey LaJoie asked him about the possibilities of NASCAR going beyond American shores. Safe to say, O’Donnell had an interesting answer, and it would surely pique the interest of NASCAR fans.

He said, “Certainly Canada, we’ve always had a stock car series up there. We went to Montreal with the former Busch Series. One of the things that I kind of learned going up there was, we didn’t bring Cup. So we haven’t necessarily brought the Cup Series to Canada or the Cup Series to Mexico. So there’s a lot of interest from both those places. Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, they’re all talking to us, Montreal, Toronto.”

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NASCAR Chief Operating Officer gave a small warning

Of course, this is all very exciting, that NASCAR is eyeing the likes of Canada and Mexico. However, the calendar is 36 races long, and how much can the sport push it without facing resistance from teams. Obviously, none of them are going to stand for the calendar going beyond 36 races, as it will strain the teams. On the other end of the scale, which races will be facing the axe, in order to make way for potential new venues.

O’Donnell continued, “So there’s a lot of interest, the key for us is going to be, ‘How do we balance this?’. You grew up on short tracks, our fans love short tracks. We don’t want to turn it into a 30-race road course schedule. Got to balance where we’re going to take a race, and what kind of race track we’re going to migrate that to.”

He was referring to the fact that there needs to be a healthy mix of NASCAR tracks. At the moment, there are four types of tracks, Short tracks, Intermediate tracks, Superspeedways, and Road Courses. One type cannot dominate the other, or it might put off the drivers, teams and the fans.

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