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Written by:
Tom Jensen
05/05/2008 - 02:58 PM
Charlotte, N.C.
Cars race under the lights during the All-Star Race at Lowe's Motor Speedway. (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images Photo) ยป More Photos
From the time it first opened in 1960, Lowe’s Motor Speedway has been all about being big, being bold and being innovative.
Track owner O. Bruton Smith and President and General Manager H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler have masterminded some of the biggest – and often the most outlandish – innovations in NASCAR history. Lowe’s hosts the only race on the NASCAR schedule longer than 500 miles, the Coca-Cola 600, and it was the first track on the circuit with luxury suites, condominiums and a title sponsor.
And it’s been home to school bus races, Robosaurus, pre-race shows that simulated U.S. military invasions overseas and the place where Wheeler once stuck his head in a tiger’s mouth. A live tiger.
More importantly, Lowe’s Motor Speedway is also the first NASCAR superspeedway to receive lighting all the way around, something that played a critical role in the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race in 1992, the very first time the event was run under the lights.
There was a new format for 1992, as the race was split into three segments over 70
Davey Allison, driver of the powerhouse Robert Yates Racing Ford Thunderbird, came into the event as the defending champion, the 1991 victory being his first for his young crew chief, a fellow Alabama native named Larry McReynolds.
But he was facing a stout field that included Dale Earnhardt in the black No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, Kyle Petty in Felix Sabates’s Pontiac and Rusty Wallace in a Roger Penske-owned Pontiac.
But the star of the show was the phenomenal $1.7 million lighting system developed by Musco Lighting, a project said to require enough lighting to power 10 Rose Bowls. Musco, which is based in Oskaloosa, Iowa, checked the feasibility of lighting up LMS by building a 1/50th scale model of the track back at corporate headquarters and illuminating it with 200 Mini-Mag flashlights.
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