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BUY TICKETS: See the races at Bristol

Kevin Harvick’s No. 4 Busch Beer Ford Fusion will look like a million bucks at the May 20 Monster Energy NASCAR All-Star Race, and one race fan will have an opportunity to cash in, as well.

 

As Stewart-Haas Racing driver and 2007 All-Star Race winner Harvick races for the $1 million prize, Busch Beer will match that first-place prize if indeed Harvick takes the checkered flag.

 

The beer brand is launching its Busch Bucks loyalty program, and fans who are 21 and older and enroll in it on BuschBucks.com between April 17 and May 6 will be eligible to win the big prize.

 

"While we want to win every single week, the Busch Bucks million-dollar giveaway definitely ups the ante and adds some serious pressure to the No. 4 team in the All-Star Race," Harvick said in a news release. "Even though it’s a non-points exhibition race, the stakes are going to be about as high as they can possibly be on May 20."

 

Fans who enroll in the Busch Bucks program also can take home Busch-themed prizes. The way it works is fans register, purchase eligible Busch products, upload their receipts to BuschBucks.com to collect points, then redeem the points for prizes that include T-shirts, coolers, hats and more.

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — GMS Racing announced Monday that 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship challenger Ben Kennedy will run at least 12 NASCAR XFINITY Series races for the team this season, beginning with the May 27 Hisense 4K TV 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

 

This is in addition to the nine XFINITY Series races Kennedy already has lined up with Richard Childress Racing, where he will make his season debut at Talladega Superspeedway on May 6.

 

Kennedy has one previous XFINITY Series start, finishing 10th at Iowa Speedway following a sixth-place qualifying effort in a Richard Childress Racing car last year.

 

The additional races with GMS this season are something Kennedy has been working on for months. And it reunites him with the team where he won his first Truck Series race — at Bristol Motor Speedway last year.

 

"It’s good to kind of have those relationships already set in stone and of course, great to be with GMS," Kennedy told NASCAR.com of the additional races with the team. "I enjoy being there. It’s a good group of people, who mean well and work hard. And I’m confident we’ll be fast.

 

"It worked out great last year, knocking down a win at Bristol and making our way to the playoffs and almost making it to (the season finale at) Homestead. It’s cool to be back with those guys. … I never really left, I guess."

 

Kennedy said he could not be more ready to take his first green flag of the season next month and feels confident the additional races with GMS will be a big boost in his development.

 

"The conversation to get me in the second car has been ongoing since the end of last season," Kennedy said. "Everyone that works at GMS is so dedicated to the team. There’s a sense of family at the shop and at the track so I’m glad everything has finally lined up.

 

"GMS has shown speed this year in both series and I know that they will give me the necessary tools to run up front."

 

The team is equally as confident in Kennedy, who has 26 top-10 finishes in 73 Camping World Truck Series starts, including 10 top-five showings and the win at Bristol last summer in just his 10th start after moving to the GMS truck team midseason.

Kennedy will be paired again with crew chief Jeff Stankiewicz, who guided him to a top-10 finish at Kansas Speedway in their only race together — Kennedy’s first with GMS in 2016.

 

"We couldn’t be more excited to have Ben fill our second car," said GMS Racing Director of Competition, Mike Beam. "This is a huge step for our XFINITY Series program and I look forward to watching Ben learn and grow as a driver through it."

 

Kennedy, 25, has five top-five finishes on intermediate tracks such as Charlotte where he will be making his GMS season debut. He scored four top-five finishes with GMS last year and earned a bid to the Truck Series playoffs.

 

"I’m very ready to go. It’s been a long offseason for me, so it’s great to know Talladega is around the corner and even better to know we’re going to Charlotte after and will have a pretty busy schedule," Kennedy said. "I’m looking forward to it.

"It’s been a bit bittersweet. I’ve had a lot of downtime and able to work on some of my other ventures, but at the same time I’m ready to get back in the car and get focused. It will be good having the next month to really prepare and hone in on my first couple of races."

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RELATED: Read more Inside Groove

@nascarcasm held his annual Peeps 400 this week in honor of the marshmallow, Easter-time treat. The premise: 16 Peeps with numbers corresponding to the drivers in last year’s playoff field were placed in a microwave, heat set to high for five minutes. The one Peep to outlast the other 15 will be crowned the winner of the 2017 Peeps 400. Watch the video below to see who won. 

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BUY TICKETS: See the races at Bristol


Next weekend’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (April 24, 1 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) marks the 25-year sponsorship anniversary between the grocery chain and the track.

 

Yes, 25 years. The Silver Anniversary is a testament, of course, to a perfect pairing of brands that both receive great value from their partnership.

Even now, the Food City sponsorship of Bristol Motor Speedway’s spring Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event is as strong as ever. It is the second-longest race entitlement in NASCAR, trailing only the Coca-Cola sponsorship of the 600-mile May race at Charlotte.

Initially, it wasn’t a long-term deal between the two, but after the 1992 Food City 500, officials were ready to return as soon as the next season. 

"We signed the (initial) agreement and we had a great first race," Steve Smith, Food City President and CEO, previously told NASCAR.com. "Alan Kulwicki actually won our first race in 1992; I remember that well. We were off and running."

Smith said his company, founded by his father, Jack, became involved at the right time in the sport, when the fan base was on the upswing, TV coverage was gaining traction and sponsorship dollars were flowing.

"What happened with Bristol was really indicative of what was happening with NASCAR — it was just growing and growing," he said. "Five years later, Bruton (Smith, Speedway Motorsports Inc., founder) bought the track and things just really started to escalate here with the amenities and the things that they did for the race fans. … Folks love coming here, they love the racing environment, and they love, I think, the southern hospitality.

"We try, as a sponsor, to do a lot of things to get them in here a little bit early, whether it’s Food City Race Night or other events to really make it a full week of fun for the race fan."


RELATED: Learn more about the track

In addition to the Monster Energy Series sponsorship, the company also sponsors the August NASCAR XFINITY Series event at Bristol. While there have been times that spending money on race entitlement rights might have been questionable, Smith said, "I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we really thought about dropping the race."

The return for Food City, he said, comes in many forms. No. 1 is name recognition.

"We’re a relatively small regional company," Smith said. "But it’s a sense of pride for our associates, our customers who know we sponsor racing. NASCAR fans are very loyal, they’re loyal to the brands that are involved whether it’s Food City or other consumer products sponsors. We think it helps us sell more products and bring more people in to our stores."

In February 2014, Food City and BMS officials announced a five-year extension for the naming rights of the track’s spring race. So the relationship will continue through 2019 — at least.

"At the end of the day, it’s hard to put a financial statement together that proves that it’s a great spend, but we’ve been doing good ever since we been sponsoring racing so we don’t want to stop there," Smith said.

 

— Kenny Bruce contributed to this article

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Editor’s note: Every Friday during the season, "Tweets You Might Have Missed" presents eight of the best NASCAR-related tweets from the week. 



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NASCAR’s premier series entitlement sponsor Monster Energy was awarded brand of the year and recognized as a luminary honoree at the sixth annual 2017 Cynopsis Sports Media Awards on Thursday morning in New York City.

 

NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Global Sales and Marketing Officer Steve Phelps presented Monster Energy with the Gem Award, which honors the brand of the year. Monster Energy Senior Vice President of Marketing Sam Pontrelli accepted the award on behalf of the company.

"It’s a great honor," Pontrelli told NASCAR.com. "Monster Energy is 15 years old now and we’ve come a long way in a very short period of time by doing things a little differently than other people in terms of business community of being kind of a nontraditional brand. So it’s really nice to be recognized as brand of the year even though we don’t do things like everyone else. It almost acknowledges that fact that, ‘OK they are a legitimate player even though they don’t play like everyone else.’ "

Monster Energy was announced with a multi-year deal as the premier series entitlement sponsor in late 2016. The energy drink company, which embodies the notion of being a lifestyle brand with its motto "A lifestyle in a can," now has a large presence at NASCAR races from 300X300 foot activation stations to Monster Energy girls who interact with fans and help winning teams celebrate in Victory Lane. The company also maintains a huge social media presence.

For Pontrelli, its nontraditional methods in a very traditional industry like the beverage industry is what sets Monster Energy apart.

 

"So many brands that are in kind of our same (industry) do very traditional things," Pontrelli said. " … Our roots are very much different than that, so it’s nice to see that people have an open mind to something other than just the very traditional and have acknowledged the fact that we can be a legitimate player without doing the same thing that is expected of a company like ours.

"…Going into our NASCAR sponsorship, what we really wanted to do was make sure that Monster’s personality came through to NASCAR. Rather than becoming kind of another NASCAR brand, we wanted to make sure that we brought our personality to NASCAR."

Marrying a popular and traditional brand like NASCAR with Monster Energy’s innovative nature has allowed growth for the company. This award validates that, Pontrelli says.

"(The award) means that we can continue to evolve as a company and have very positive outcome from it," Pontrelli said. "Originally we started with very, very niche sports; skateboarding, BMX and motocross that were influential in setting the personality for our brand. But there weren’t a whole lot of people watching all those sports. And so as we started evolving as a brand and getting into things that got a little more eyeballs, and got a little bit more traditional, we were worried about ‘How is this evolution going to affect our brand?’ And so by going into NASCAR, it was a really big risk for us because we didn’t want to appear like we were evolving too quickly in (becoming) the entitlement sponsor of one of the top four sporting series in the country.

"And so to be recognized by Cynopsis in a very positive way kind of legitimizes that we can continue to evolve the brand and do new things and still be recognized as an innovator and a brand that is still very much influential among the sports community in this kind of new way that we’re approaching this."


NASCAR was nominated in multiple Cynopsis Sports Media Award categories and received top honors in Overall Social Media Excellence, recognizing the best use of social media platforms in sports.

 

From the 2016 Daytona 500 through the playoffs and championship finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR social media drove record-setting metrics last season as the sport continued to evolve its overall marketing strategy and lead with social media. 

Last year, NASCAR generated 4.3 billion impressions and 287 million engagements – a 101 percent year-over-year increase – on Facebook and Twitter. NASCAR also doubled its Snapchat Live Stories and brought fans closer to key moments of the season on Facebook Live, including Tony Stewart’s final Monster Energy Series race and the announcement of Monster Energy as premier series entitlement partner.

 

The 2016 season also marked the introduction of NASCAR’s Social Media Partner Engagement team, built to provide ongoing strategic counsel and social support for official partners.

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BUY TICKETS: See the races at Bristol

All these seasons (16), all these Monster Energy NASCAR Cup win trophies (81) and all those Hall of Fame-ready championships (seven) later, the perpetually good-natured Jimmie Johnson can still smile when people wonder if his success train has derailed. Even a bit.

His victory Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway – now giving him a winner’s cowboy hat for every day of the week — simultaneously assured his fans all is well with an automatic playoff bid and left the others to mutter, "Here we go again."

Yep. Here we go again and what a historical ride this could be.

To be fair, this has been the statistically slowest start to a season in his career. Even after his win Sunday he’s ranked a surprisingly low 11th – up three spots from last week.

After the season-opening six races leading into Texas produced "Johnson subpar" results, there was plenty of speculation that the multi-time and reigning champion No. 48 team might have finally recessed a bit. That the group might have become "human" – you know, found itself mired in a  … "slump."

If you can really consider six races without a trophy, a slump, for Pete’s sake.

RELATED: Johnson rallies, corrals Texas win


At no point during the early season did Johnson or his fearless team leader, crew chief Chad Knaus, appear worried, however. They met all their media requirements – with a smile. And even after a qualifying gaffe just this Friday at Texas, there was no panic.

It was sort of similar to the 2016 season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, when NASCAR officials discovered a last minute, technical concern on the car. The team had to push the Chevrolet off the starting grid, go through inspection again and Johnson lined up last for the season-finale, championship-determining green flag.

Again, no panic on the team.

Johnson methodically worked his way back toward the front at Miami, took the lead with three laps of extra time remaining and drove off to earn his record-tying seventh Cup title – a championship tally many believe will never happen again in the sport. Yet, it’s a number Johnson may well add to.

It was brilliant work — and even more dramatic considering the obstacles the team had to overcome. But it was of little surprise to those that know this group best.

"I think there’s a little bit of vintage 48 in that," Knaus conceded Sunday at Texas. "It seems as though we have in times of turmoil and distress managed to get some pretty solid finishes with the 48 car, and I think that’s a true testament to Jimmie and his ability to not waver.


"He doesn’t get spooked. He doesn’t get too crazy. He keeps his calm. He’s very calm in nature as we all know. So him doing that and allowing us to work on the race car the way that we need to without panic setting in, I think there’s definitely an element to that. We love a challenge."

And the team has had its share in the early portion of this season.

That’s why being Jimmie Johnson is such a bonus – a perpetually under-appreciated advantage.

The El Cajon, California, native remains calm, cool and collected no matter the size of the challenge.

And it’s actually a good lesson for all of us who are less inclined to breathe and set-in.

Even after requiring three bags of IV fluid following a steamy race and malfunction with Johnson’s in-car drinking system at Texas on Sunday, he still fulfilled a winner’s obligation for a press conference.

RELATED: Johnson taken to infield care center after Texas win


After hearing about how "off" Johnson felt in Victory Lane, some in the media center were quite sure he would understandably beg off. He had done all the television and radio interviews while in Victory Lane, after all.

But no, nearly two hours after the race, Johnson came in and answered all the interview questions anyone had. All class.

My question was the same to Knaus and later to Johnson. What’s the secret in keeping so cool under so much pressure, to achieving ultimate excellence when odds are toughest?


"There certainly is a mindset that works for everyone, and for me, much more on the reserved side has always paid off for me," Johnson said. "It may be the environment. At Homestead, kind of reacting to things and keeping me under control was good. And today was good.

"I feel like at times when I start up front or we’ve had a dominant weekend, you’re kind of expected to perform, and you can try too hard easily in this sport. I don’t know exactly, but maybe there is something, and kind of just being knocked down a notch, like ‘OK, this is going to be a working man’s day,’ we’re going to have to fight through a lot, stay calm, identify with 100 percent, because again, it’s very easy to step over that line and bust your butt, from a pit call being too aggressive, too aggressive on pit lane in the car, passing other cars like we did today.
 

"I had to be so patient, and in the end, the patience kind of paid off for me."

It did. Again.

And now, somewhere on a beach in Mexico, Johnson is vacationing with his family during NASCAR’s Easter off-week. He joked Sunday that he planned to indulge in Mexican food, get a tan (or sunburn, he worried) and most likely, enjoy a margarita. Or two.

So here’s a toast to you Jimmie.

Congrats on the way you keep bringing it, racing like you’re trying to earn your first win.

All while reminding everyone why you are such a true champion.


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Team Penske’s appeal of a rules violation and subsequent penalties against driver Brad Keselowski, crew chief Paul Wolfe and the No. 2 team will be heard April 12 by three members of the National Motorsports Appeals Panel, according to a NASCAR official.

 

The No. 2 team failed post-race inspection following last month’s Camping World 500 at Phoenix Raceway. Wolfe was fined $65,000 and suspended for three races. Keselowski was assessed with the loss of 35 driver points and Penske lost 35 car owner points.

 

The organization, which fields entries in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series for Keselowski and teammate Joey Logano, delayed its request for an appeal until it had the opportunity to inspect the Phoenix entry at its Mooresville, North Carolina, headquarters. Wolfe was replaced by interim crew chief Brian Wilson at Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 400 the following week, where Keselowski finished second.

 

It subsequently filed notice of an appeal and requested the penalties be deferred until the results of the appeal were determined. That deferral was granted, and Wolfe returned to the pit box for last week’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway, where Keselowski scored his second win of the season.


MORE: Penske appeal allows Wolfe to lead Kes to victory | No. 2 team penalized

The team was penalized under Sections 20.17.3.2.1 of the NASCAR rule book for failing post-race rear steer on the Laser Inspection Station (LIS). The L1 level penalty calls for the finish to be encumbered, meaning any bonus points earned would not be eligible toward use in the playoffs. Keselowski finished fifth in the Phoenix race last month.

 

Team owner Roger Penske addressed the decision to file an appeal following Keselowski’s Martinsville victory.

 

"Look, I need him on that box every weekend," Penske said of Wolfe. "I told him I’d pay him to be on that box every weekend not to be sitting in his motor home looking at a bunch of monitors.

 

"But … really the strategy was that we’d take a race off last week (at ACS) and then make the appeal and I guess we’ll be coming back here (to Martinsville) so it was good to get the experience here on this track, obviously, because it’ll be in the (playoffs)."

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BUY TICKETS: See the action at Charlotte for All-Star Weekend and more

RELATED: All-Star Race FAQ | 2017 format


CONCORD, N.C. — Shorter stages and an elimination factor will almost certainly produce more intense competition when the 2017 Monster Energy All-Star Race takes place May 20 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.



But there’s a new twist to the format introduced this year that is expected to be the real game-changer — the availability of an "Option" set of tires, to be used at each team’s discretion.



The softer compound tires are expected to be anywhere from three-to five-tenths of a second faster initially than the "Prime" tires that will also be used by teams.



"For dirt tracks, you have two or three different compounds you can choose from, different staggers to make your car work better," Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points leader Kyle Larson said during Tuesday’s All-Star format announcement at CMS. "Adding that little bit of tire game and strategy is exciting for the race teams and if you can hit on it, it’s really good."



But it’s not a guarantee, Larson, driver of the No. 42 Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing, warned.



"They say it’s softer, but sometimes softer compounds can react differently when they mesh with a different rubber out on the race track," he said. "So you never really know how it’s going to be. We’re going to have to try to learn as much as we can in that short practice that we get."


The format for year’s event is modeled after the 1992 All-Star Race, and consists of 70 laps total, run in three 20-lap stages followed by a 10-lap shootout. The final segment will consist of 10 drivers — winners of the first three stages and the remainder determined based on average finishing position through the first three stages. Any ties would be broken by highest finishing position in the third stage.



Teams will be provided one set of the softer tires for practice only and one set for the All-Star Race. The tires must be installed as a set; also, any team waiting until the final stage of the race to install the softer tires must start behind any team or teams running the harder, prime tires.



The format for this year’s event is modeled after the 1992 All-Star Race, and consists of 70 laps total, run in three 20-lap stages followed by a final 10-lap shootout.



RELATED: 1992’s wild ‘One Hot Night’ | Relive ‘Pass in the Grass’



"The more tractive compounds used in this combination of left and right-side tires will showcase the strategy of the event, and will give teams the ability to choose exactly when to use this set-up to give them the best chance to win," Greg Stucker, Goodyear’s director of racing, said in a release from the tire supplier.



The prime tires will carry the traditional yellow lettering on the sidewalls while the option tires will feature bold green lettering, allowing fans to tell at a glance which teams are running which type of tire during the event.



Kurt Busch (Stewart-Haas Racing No. 41 Ford) called the tire equation "huge."



"We’ll have a set in practice and that will allow the teams to adjust to the car according to that set, or (find out) that it’s not that much of an advantage" said Busch, the 2010 All-Star winner said. "That’s something we’ll have to find out through practice.



"But that makes it that much more fun, going into a race where there’s a million bucks on the line, no points and the format is very crisp and clean this year … if these tires, if they’re soft and they go, I’ll run them all 70 laps."



Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer, said having tire options in points-paying events in the future was possible.



"We want to see how this plays out but when you look at one of the levers we can look to pull from a competitive standpoint, this is certainly one of those and one we’re excited about," O’Donnell said.



"We’re positive on what could happen here on Saturday night; it’s something we would look at for sure."



Having two tire choices isn’t new for NASCAR. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, teams had the option of running tires produced by either Goodyear or Hoosier. But as both companies used softer and softer compounds in an effort to provide the most speed, durability suffered. Tire failures became common and drivers paid the price.



With Goodyear being the sole supplier today, such concerns no longer exist.



"We know these tires are going to be safe," former crew chief Jeff Hammond said. "They may wear out; they may give up. But (drivers are) not going to have to worry about going down through there and (the tires) not being able to handle the pressure."



Hammond, now a NASCAR analyst for FOX, won the Daytona 500 as crew chief for Darrell Waltrip in 1989. Hammond said the team qualified "on Goodyear tires and then we wound up switching to Hoosiers (for the race)."



"These (softer) tires could wind up being the magic to upset some other guys that have been fast all year long," he said. "We may have a very unique final 10-lap field … for that final segment."



Fifteen drivers have already qualified for this year’s All-Star Race, 12 for having won one or more Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races since the start of the 2016 season and three as former All-Star Race winners.



RELATED: All-Star Race drivers so far



Those drivers are: Race winners Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Martin Truex Jr. Kurt Busch, Joey Logano, Chris Buescher, Kyle Larson and Ryan Newman; Jamie McMurray, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne are eligible as previous All-Star Race winners.



Up to three additional drivers can advance out of the Monster Energy Open, a 50-lap qualifying race also scheduled for May 20. That 50-lap race will feature three segments (20 laps, 20 laps, 10 laps) with segment winners advancing to the All-Star Race. Once a driver wins a stage during the open, he or she is not required to compete in the remaining stages.



One team will qualify for the All-Star Race based on fan vote. Details of that program have yet to be released.

Programming info for the Monster Energy All-Star Race

When: Saturday, May 20, events start at 6 p.m. ET with the Monster Energy Open followed by the Monster Energy All-Star Race
Where: Charlotte Motor Speedway
TV: FS1
Radio: MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

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BUY TICKETS: See the action at Charlotte for All-Star Weekend and more

RELATED: All-Star Race FAQ | 2017 format


CONCORD, N.C. — There was a heavy nod toward tradition in Tuesday’s announcement of the format for the Monster Energy All-Star Race, an acknowledgement of a pivotal point in its history and a NASCAR highlight for all times.



After seven runnings in the 1980s into the ’90s, the exhibition event already had many memorable moments but was still searching for a foothold on the NASCAR schedule. The outlandish idea to give the race an identity was either ridiculed as a gimmick or dismissed as something that couldn’t be done. Yet in 1992, the All-Star event found a place among stock-car racing’s grandest stages at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and remarkably, that stage was illuminated.



NASCAR and the track ushered in another age Tuesday, introducing a four-segment format, a tire-strategy option and a field-thinning elimination before the final 10-lap dash planned for the May 20 exhibition. But the 33rd running of the event will also coincide with the 25th anniversary of the sport-altering race billed as "One Hot Night." It will also feature the same number of laps — 70.



Speedway Motorsports president Marcus Smith was just finishing up high school when the lighting project — unheard of at the time for a track of its size — began to take shape ahead of the race that was then known as "The Winston." Night races were frequent at NASCAR’s local and weekly bullrings, but rare in NASCAR’s top division with only Bristol and Richmond conducting their races under the lights at that time.



Smith, who celebrated his 44th birthday Tuesday, was working summers as an intern during the advent of "One Hot Night." while his father — NASCAR Hall of Famer and track mogul Bruton Smith — helped guide the track into the next century. Even then, as the event came under such scrutiny and suspense, Marcus Smith knew the advent of permanent lights at a 1.5-mile track had the potential to tilt the direction of the sport.



"It was tremendous. It was absolutely stunning for a big superspeedway to be lit and to run a NASCAR race at night," the younger Smith said. "Of course, some people said, ‘Hey, we grew up racing on a Saturday night under the lights,’ but it was a big adjustment. There was a lot of controversy. There were a lot of drivers who weren’t sure about it, and so it was not something that was just a common occurrence like it is today."



The trepidation ahead of the full-moon Saturday night in May 1992 was real. Engineers with Iowa-based company Musco Lighting conducted multiple tests before the event, hoping to allay the concerns about potential shadows, dark spots, gaps in drivers’ depth perception — all valid worries when lapping a high-banked oval after nightfall at 180-mph-plus.



"You’re worried about the unknown," said Jeff Hammond, who paired with Darrell Waltrip to win the inaugural All-Star Race in 1985 and was atop the pit box for the NASCAR Hall of Famer again in ’92. "These were just some of the things going through my mind that night, but it turned out to be the wave of the future. It was well executed and couldn’t have been any better. Bruton did an excellent job and the people at Musco that worked with them on the lights for the race track, they did their homework.



"In the end, I think the fans were just blown away with the fireworks that were going on. … We all got educated in a lot of different ways because of that one big, I guess you might say leap of faith that happened that night. You saw the end result that evening."



That closing act was one of the sport’s greatest. Dale Earnhardt was nudged from the top spot on the final lap, leaving Davey Allison and Kyle Petty to settle it in a fender-scraping duel to the finish line. Allison prevailed, crashing after the checkered flag in a deluge of sparks that lit up the night.



What was once novelty is now the norm. Six of the eight tracks in SMI’s speedway empire and 15 of the 23 tracks on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series schedule have permanent lights — a radiance owed to a crazy idea that hatched more than 25 years ago.



"It was definitely a night that I remember like it was yesterday," Smith says, "and I love that Charlotte Motor Speedway has played such a key role in NASCAR history and the highlights of the sport."

Programming info for the Monster Energy All-Star Race

When: Saturday, May 20, events start at 6 p.m. ET with the Monster Energy Open followed by the Monster Energy All-Star Race
Where: Charlotte Motor Speedway
TV: FS1
Radio: MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio