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ALL-STAR: First Night Race ‘A Defining Moment’
NASCAR on FOX announcer and former crew chief Larry McReynolds will never forget the first All-Star race held at night...
Jim Pedley  | http://www.RacinToday.com  |  Posted May 06, 2011   Charlotte, NC
The Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway has been held under the lights since 1992. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
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Larry McReynolds has spent virtually his entire life around really fast cars. In the NASCAR garages and pits working on cars, as a Sprint Cup race-winning crew chief and now as a television analyst for national broadcasts of races. Speed, literally, has defined McReynolds’ life.

But the other day, as he talked about that life, he said that perhaps the most goose bump-raising memory he has of racing was the time when an entire field of massively powerful Cup cars came to a complete stop on a race track.

It was the time when NASCAR lit up the night for the very first time. It was All-Star Race night, 1992. “It was a milestone,” McReynolds said.

“You could feel it,” McReynolds said. “When those lights came on and the sun started setting and there was an unbelievable crowd there that night. And to me the most electrifying moment of that evening was when those cars left pit road and the pace car stopped them on the frontstretch and we were on the pole with Davey (Allison) and the 28 car. ... Those cars stopped on the frontstretch for a photo opportunity and it looked like 10 million flash bulbs going off from the grandstand, and for me, that was one of those defining moments.”

Today, NASCAR fans and competitors take night racing for granted. With almost a third of its Cup races held under the lights, it has become woven into the fabric of the sport.

But 20 years ago, the thought of holding a Cup race at night at a 1.5-mile intermediate track like Charlotte Motor Speedway was something only the skulls of the most innovative chance-takers could contemplate.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler was the president of CMS in those days. He had already made Charlotte the epicenter of fan-friendly innovation. It was during negotiations with officials at The Nashville Network, the broadcast home of the race, that the idea of lighting CMS and staging the All-Star event at night was put forth by Wheeler.

Sitting across from Wheeler at the negotiating table were two people – one of whom he was well-acquainted with. It was his own daughter, Patti Wheeler, and she was working for TNN.

Patti Wheeler’s first reaction to the idea was panic.

“I was scared to death,” she said. “Dad comes up with the idea to do lights and I’m petrified because nobody had ever lit a venue that big for racing. I was director of motorsports and I was going to be line producer of this event. So, if it went bad, I was going to wear it as much as anybody. It was frightening.”

At the same time, Patti knew it was a fabulous idea. A natural idea.

“It was the concept of short-track Saturday nights,” she said. “I jumped on board immediately. To me, it was brilliant as a fan.”

Brilliant in more ways than one. Lighting at sports venues in those days were generally done from above. Lights on poles or towers shining down on baseball diamonds or football fields.

But, Patti Wheeler remembers, her dad was adamant: “We’re not doing poles." Too tacky, Humpy insisted. So the engineers at Musco lighting devised a system of unique, ground-level, mirrored lighting.

The effect was stunning.

“Maybe my dad did, but none of us anticipated how gorgeous it was going to make that event look for television," Patti Wheeler said. "All the cars just poppoed. And all the ugly stuff, and let’s face it, there’s always ugly stuff, ugly trailers and ugly stuff around the race track, all of that was dissipated.”

McReynolds was sitting on top of the pit box of Davey Allison, the eventual race winner, that night. His big memory came from up there. It was a moment charged with electricity, figuratively and literally.

“Here we are at a mile-and-a-half race track, Charlotte Motor Speedway, the All-Star Race, a packed house, a full moon and I can still see those cars lined up on the frontstretch, engines running under those lights.”

Soon, other tracks began adding the Musco light system and other races began being run under the lights. Those events became special.

Larry McReynolds is a NASCAR analyst for SPEED and FOX Sports. (Photo: Getty Images)
Some think night races are still special, even though there are 11 of them on the Cup schedule this year.

“There’s three times a year when I still get the hair up on the back of my neck,” McReynolds said. “One is where they say gentleman start your engines for the Daytona 500. I think when 43 cars take the green flag coming down that long straightaway at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (at the Brickyard 400). And when the 43 cars take the green flag at Bristol at night in August. It’s not completely night, it’s twilight and those cars take the green flag and a lot like that night in Charlotte, it looks like 10 million flash bulbs going off.”

Patti Wheeler called the night under the lights in 1992 “revolutionizing” for the sport. McReynolds called it “a defining moment” for NASCAR.

Many now call it, simply, the Sprint All-Star Race.

Jim Pedley is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist who has worked at, among other places, the Boston Globe, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Kansas City Star. Pedley can be reached at jpedley@racintoday.com

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