Starting with Daytona’s Sprints Unlimited race the day before Valentine’s Day, Sprint Cup will run a similar schedule to 2015.
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The Bristol change allows the track more time to prepare for a college football game, which means building a field in the center of the track area.
One big change that should help guard against what has become a headache: Daytona’s July race will be scheduled on a Saturday night. Rain forced postponements and delays in recent years. Now, the Fourth of July event will have time to adjust without pushing to get the race in on a Sunday night.
This week, NASCAR announced five-year sanctioning agreements with 23 tracks.
“Among the goals that we set out to accomplish with our track partners was to provide consistency for race fans and the industry stakeholders,” said Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer. “We feel like we have a nice balance of that for 2016.”
The agreements end stockcar racing’s practice to year-to-year accords.
Michigan and Bristol swapped dates to allow the earlier date for the football game between Tennessee and Virginia Tech in Thunder Valley.
Sprint Cup will run at Dover before its two weeks in Charlotte in last May. The Richmond change should allow for more fan appeal.
“We had more than 40 years of afternoon races here,” track president Dennis Bickmeier told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “So there’s some nostalgia to it.”
Still, it will be the first scheduled Richmond day race since 1997. But the race will be build as a “spring classic” with hope of building a brand to match the strength of Richmond’s second race, which is the last before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Here is the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule.
