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HEMBREE: The Night The Lights Went On In Charlotte
Night superspeedway racing wasn’t a given before a lighting breakthrough at Charlotte Motor Speedway…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted May 13, 2011   Charlotte, NC
SPEED.com NASCAR Editor Mike Hembree is a veteran, award-winning motorsports journalist. (File Photo)
It seems quite odd now, but it should be noted, as we prepare for one of NASCAR’s most popular events – the night-time Sprint All-Star race, that there were some doubts that this thing would work.

It was audacious, after all. Not since NASCAR race cars had started going really, really fast had anyone given much thought to running a superspeedway race after dark. NASCAR races went like this – you went to church on Sunday morning, you ran home to grab lunch, and you plopped down on the couch for the 1 o’clock race start.

This – this first night race in All-Star (then The Winston) history – would be something altogether different. Cup cars would race at very high speeds at night.

The deal had been made by – no surprise here – Humpy Wheeler, then the president of Charlotte Motor Speedway and a man who could attract an overflow crowd to watch an oil change. Seeing the possibility of the popular Winston slipping away from his track, Wheeler took a swing at the fences, shelled out $1.7 million for lights and told the gentlemen they would be starting their engines at night.

Audacious.

Some people were dubious. That fast? At night? Would there be dark – and therefore dangerous – spots on the track? Would the glare from the lights cause problems?

No less a personage than Dale Earnhardt Sr., a man who never met a challenge he backed away from, questioned the concept.

Although it seems quite normal now, it was clear then that the race should not be held without a test run. It was scheduled April 15, about a month before the race. There would be time, the thinking went, to make changes if the new system had some quirks.

It was a pleasant Wednesday evening, and there was a tingle of excitement in the air. Testing the unknown tends to produce that.

Cars roared onto the track, got up to speed and – this was new – glowed in the dark.

And – nothing happened.

Charlotte Motor Speedway is home to three annual Sprint Cup races. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Somewhere Humpy Wheeler was smiling.

Even Earnhardt had a good time.

There was no grand announcement, but the lights soon got the OK. I passed Dick Beaty, then the series director and a man who put up with little nonsense, as he walked through the garage area late in the evening. “We’re going to be fine,” he said with a little grin of understatement.

And they were. Actually, more than fine. Night superspeedway racing quickly became a trend, as lights popped up on the perimeters of race tracks like kids jumping for candy.

When the Sprint All-Star Race rolls off under the lights next week, the only dark spots on the track will be the shadows of the race cars, rolling along on a continuing phenomenon.

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.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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