NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Twelve For ’12
The new NASCAR season offers a variety of attractions – from beginning to end and from coast to coast…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted January 02, 2012   Charlotte, NC
The 2013 Daytona 500 will kick off the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. (Photo: Getty Images)
Welcome to 2012.

The actual start of the NASCAR season is weeks away, but Sprint Cup testing is next week at Daytona International Speedway, the next NASCAR Hall of Fame induction beckons and the refurbished season preview show at the Charlotte Convention Center will offer a new look at beginnings.

In other words, it’s not too early to pull out the seasonal schedule and a handy calendar – paper or plastic – and circle stuff.

Suggestions? Here are 12 for ’12:

Ride With Acceleration Weekend – Check out the newly minted season kickoff in Charlotte Jan. 20-22. Drivers, cars, autographs, photographs, exhibits, Hall of Fame inductions. It’s a new winter schedule for Hall of Fame activities, and it’s a return to the preview concept, one formerly very popular in Winston-Salem, NC in the Winston Cup days.

Catch The Daytona 500 – Never been to the Great American Race? Mark it down and make it work. There is no greater atmosphere in American stock car racing.

Eat A Martinsville Hotdog – There is no more anticipated culinary delight in the motorsports world than the Martinsville Speedway dog, a concoction of somewhat mysterious ingredients and suspicious color but tingling taste. Try one or seven.

You Can’t Control The Remote, But… – Check out an event at Charlotte Motor Speedway if only to see the monster video screen on the backstretch. The CMS publicity machine exaggerates things now and then; in this case, there is no embellishment. This marvel is worth your time. And if the race is bad, they might switch to NCIS reruns.

Meet Miles – There are statues here and there in NASCAR territory, but none is as imposing as the oversized Miles the monster at Dover International Speedway. His eyes glow. He holds a race car in one hand. He’s meaner than Kurt Busch waiting for a TV interview.

Saturday Night Alive – Spend one Saturday night along Talladega Boulevard in the Talladega Speedway infield on race weekend. Crazy things happen. And there’s no tandem drafting.

Go To Darlington – Every race fan should see a race at the sport’s Fenway Park. History seeps from the crevices here.

Have A Ball At The Hall – The NASCAR Hall of Fame has enough exhibits and interactive displays to keep a race fan enthralled for longer than it takes to run the Coca-Cola 600. The bigger, brighter displays attract the most attention, but take time to examine the small stuff in the display cases. Racing history lives here.

Trail Dale – Check out the Dale Trail in Kannapolis, NC, Dale Earnhardt’s hometown. The route connects pieces and places of Earnhardt’s history with the Kannapolis plaza that features a statue of the seven-time champion.
Night Racing at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

Step Into The Night At Bristol – Once one of the toughest tickets in NASCAR, Bristol’s late-summer night race has openings. Reward yourself. Even if the racing is not as slam-bang, wreck-happy exciting as it once was (as some fans claim), Bristol Motor Speedway on a hot summer’s evening remains lightning caught in a bottle.

Rise At Phoenix – Catch a race from one of the strangest vantage points in NASCAR – on the small mountainside (or maybe it’s a big hill) overlooking the third and fourth turns at Phoenix International Raceway. You’ll be keeping company with desert cacti and dirt devils blown up by the wind and – some say – the occasional rattlesnake.

Catch Pocono’s First Turn – The long front straight at Pocono Raceway is one of the fastest places in NASCAR racing, which often makes the entrance to the track’s first turn a complicated place. Drivers who suddenly discover brake issues in this neighborhood have almost a second to think about how hard the hit is going to be.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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