­If you ’re unfamiliar with NASCAR , you might guess that the rac­ing time of year never cease . After all , NASCAR is all over the aviation waving on Saturdays and Sundays , not to mention throughout the week on ESPN and the SPEED meshing . To the free-and-easy percipient , NASCAR racing may seem like a perpetual sport with no goal in sight .

Actually , NASCAR does have a set season , albeit a long one – 38 race spanning 10 months . The race season starts in February and ends in November every yr . And you thought Major League Baseball ( MLB ) had a long time of year – baseball time of year is only seven month long .

­Amazingly , a 10 - month , 36 - race schedule ( not counting the All - starring race and Bud Shootout ) picket in equivalence to what NASCAR driver ran in years past . In the 1964 Grand National Series , now bonk as the Sprint Cup Series , drivers vie in 62 races that , oddly enough , ran from November 10 , 1963 to November 8 , 1964 . Now that ’s a long season . Of naturally , metre have change and the NASCAR series ( and its agenda ) has continued to evolve .

NASCAR races on in private have race tracks – all of which are asphalt or concrete . In the early day , NASCAR driver had to hie on a variety of surfaces , including filth , asphalt and even a sandy beach . Drivers in the serial publication towed their cars from race to backwash , catch some Z’s in seedy motels or camped out in their hand truck – they definitely did n’t live the high - visibility lifestyle that advanced drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart enjoy . One affair that has n’t changed over the twelvemonth is the fact that the machine driver focus on contend in as many races as possible in ordination to earn as much money as potential . Consider this ; the 1964 NASCAR champion earned $ 114,771 in raceway winnings [ rootage : Racing Reference ] . Today , that amount equates to around $ 801,816 according to the consumer price indicant ( CPI ) . While that is n’t bad , that amount does n’t even come nigh to the $ 15,313,920 Jimmie Johnson , study home as the 2007 champion [ reference : Racing Reference ] .

­Stewart and Earnhardt Jr. take flight from race to race on secret jets and own million - dollar mark racing teams . uncalled-for to say , times have changed . Considering the NASCAR circuit leaves Daytona , Fla. on Sunday and must be ready to cannonball along in Fontana , Calif. by the next Thursday , who can blame them ? But you ca n’t fly every race car and haulier to each course . Instead , NASCAR teams become route warriors for 10 months out of every year . This article will excuse some of the idiosyncrasies in the NASCAR schedule . To get things started , take a look at the next surgical incision where you ’ll get a better sympathy of the differences between the NASCAR series and four other major North American sports .

The NASCAR Sanctioning Body

­NASCAR formally knock off the green flag on its existence in 1949 . That first class consist of just eight races – seven were run on turd - coat rails and one on a road course . Daytona was on the docket , just not the same 2.5 - mile ( 4.02 - Kilometer ) superspeedway that NASCAR fan know today . From 1949 to 1958 , Daytona was a 4.15 - air mile ( 6.7 - kilometer ) road path let in a 2 - mi ( 3.22 - kilometer ) strip of the beach itself . Slowly , NASCAR evolved from grime and sand racing control surface and settled on paved track . At nowadays , the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series visits 22 unlike tracks for 36 steady time of year races and two exhibition races . Of those 22 tracks , two are road courses ( Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen ) , six are superspeedways ( Daytona , Fontana , Indianapolis , Michigan , Pocono and Talladega ) and the rest are various oval bod drift from a half - naut mi to 2 miles ( 0.8 to 3.22 kilometers ) in length .

NASCAR is unique when compare to some of the other major North American sport . Unlike the National Football League ( NFL ) , Major League Baseball ( MLB ) , the National Hockey League ( NHL ) and the National Basketball Association ( NBA ) , NASCAR is a sanctioning body rather than a league of team . Yes , those four major sports league consist of severally own teams , but the telephone number of team in each league is finite and stringently defined by the conference . NASCAR is a more of an organisation that dictates rule and procedures and if you would care to strain to meet , you ’re welcome to give it a guessing . This chief difference also contributes to hold the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule vastly different from any other summercater schedule .

Sports team in those four leagues are associated with a city and have a sure obligation to the community . For example , so as to be view for an NFL squad , the owner of the squad must discover a suitable community that will meet the requirements correct forth by the league office . But once that metropolis and the team ’s owner get through an agreement , the squad receives a guaranteed percent share of home games . NASCAR , on the other paw , has no dwelling house and outside teams . backwash tracks are owned and operate on severally from NASCAR . Along the same line , the various tracks are not exclusive to any specific racing serial and NASCAR can ( and does ) choose whatever track it wants to curb races on .

Speedway Motorsports Inc. ( SMI ) and International Speedway Corp. ( ISC ) are think the two heavy - batter in the racing adeptness and cartroad ownership public . Between the two companies , NASCAR visits track owned by SMI or ISC for 31 out of 36 race . In all , ISC own 12 tracks on the NASCAR electrical circuit while SMI owns seven . Indianapolis Motor Speedway , Pocono Raceway and Dover International Speedway are the only tracks on the circuit not owned by either SMI or ISC . This bit of information may interest airstream fans : ISC is have by the France family , the same family that plant and currently owns NASCAR . While it may sound like a conflict of interest to own tracks as well as the racing series , NASCAR officials are smart enough to also give fans races at popular cut such as Bristol Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway – both tracks owned by SMI .

One way of life SMI or ISC can seek to manage another airstream at one of its tracks is by purchase a cart track on the current NASCAR race agenda with the purport of move the effect to another track owned by the corporation . That ’s precisely what SMI proprietor O. Bruton Smith did in 2004 when he purchased Rockingham Speedway and go on to fleetly shut it down . NASCAR gave one of the former Rockingham race date to Phoenix International Speedway ( an ISC track ) and one went to Texas Motor Speedway ( an SMI track ) . That seems mediocre , right ? Well , not to the NASCAR fans in the Rockingham , N.C. area .

­Unfortunately , not every race caterpillar track can have a NASCAR race . The next section will excuse what NASCAR officials take into circumstance when they set up the agenda . Also , how would you care it if the NFL scheduled the Super Bowl as its first plot of its season ? Sound a little crazy ? Read the next Thomas Nelson Page to witness out how NASCAR pulls something like that off each and every year .

The Current NASCAR Schedule

Realistically , the NFL could n’t play the Super Bowl at the beginning of the year for obvious reasons and the other major mutant make for more than one culminating game . But that has n’t stopped NASCAR . The Daytona 500 trance the same vibe and is considered the most prestigious subspecies on the NASCAR schedule . Fans wait in anticipation through the short off - season for racing to start out once again , and NASCAR take off the season with a bang . The Daytona 500 set the tone for the rest of the season .

­For a distinctive event , NASCAR employees and wash teams arrive at the race rails on a Thursday and do n’t provide until late in the evening on Saturday or Sunday , after the race terminate . Because of some of the distances between venue , the race car haulier number one wood have very little downtime during the week . The docket does have a few breaks throughout the year , but not many – just three , to be exact .

Each year NASCAR officials factor in several considerations when deciding the docket . NASCAR currently has piddling or no lean to add races to the already long docket ; however , it does evaluate airstream dates to determine whether a slipstream should be move to another time of the twelvemonth or in some cases , leave out from the schedule entirely .

Sometimes a race is recede due to attendance . If NASCAR deems a surrounding community can not support a wash , it can ( and will ) take away the race date . In 2003 , Darlington , S.C. hosted its last Labor Day race . Since then , the Labor Day race , formerly known as the Southern 500 , has take billet on the 2 - mile superspeedway in Fontana , Calif. The Darlington , S.C. backwash support poor attendance for years and NASCAR at last made the conclusion that it could make more money step on it at the California Speedway that weekend .

­NASCAR official ca n’t please everyone when they sit around down and make up the race schedule each yr . The logistics involve are enough to give anyone a concern . So what about contingency program ? Why is it that race officials watch the approaching weather with their digit crossed for luck ? After all , a 10 - month schedule is brutal enough without needing to make up a race . But as you may have guessed , weather condition always has the potential to play a major function in race day plans . take on to ascertain what NASCAR does if rainwater or a calamity cancels a subspecies .

Rain Delays and Race Cancellations

­As you know , all types of conditions can wager havoc in NASCAR racing – particularly rainwater . Because bloodline cars reckon on downforce to keep grip on the richly - swear oval tracks that make up the bulk of the schedule , NASCAR racing comes to a grind halt whenever it rain .

As we mentioned sooner in this article , NASCAR formerly held nearly twice as many race during a time of year as it does today . That leave very little wriggle room in the event of a rain delay or airstream cancellation . At time , daylight return made things even more difficult . Most data track did n’t have light that illuminated the bucket along surface . In fact , that did n’t come along until SMI proprietor O. Bruton Smith instal light at Lowe ’s Motor Speedway in 1992 . But today , NASCAR teams have a little more flexibleness in case of rain . Typically the backwash will be run on the next uncommitted daylight . If rainfall slue a race myopic , NASCAR officials can formally see a race winner as long as at least 50 percent of the overlap have been complete . If rain comes ahead of time in the mean solar day and the drivers do n’t have the opportunity to even start the raceway , the intact race will be run on the next day . In the rare occurrence that a race can not be rescheduled before it ’s meter to prepare for the next airstream on the agenda , NASCAR will hold the backwash after the end of the regular time of year . To date , that has only happened once – during the 2001 time of year after NASCAR cancelled the free fall slipstream at Louden , N.H. in the wake of the terrorist onslaught on September 11 . The rescheduled race was hold on November 23 ; a calendar week after crowning Jeff Gordon the 2001 champion .

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