Motorsports Trail

Have a need for speed? Have a devotion to motion? Then steer yourself to the racetracks of Pure Carolina. You can watch top-notch NASCAR races or take in competitions at the smaller tracks that pepper the area.

Stock car racing has its roots in North Carolina. During Prohibition, moonshiners developed fast cars to bootleg their wares up and down the East Coast. One thing led to another, and by 1949, the first official NASCAR race took place in Charlotte. That race started a craze that hasn’t slowed down in 60 years.

The center of car racing country is the Concord-Mooresville corridor north of Charlotte. In Concord, you can get in the driver’s seat at one of the town’s handful of racing schools. For inspiration, take in a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, which has been hosting NASCAR for nearly 50 years, or check out the only four-lane concrete drag strip in the country.

Mooresville is known as Race City USA. It’s home to dozens of NASCAR racing teams, all sorts of racing-related businesses, and the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of Fame.
There are also museums devoted to trucks, transportation, and vintage vehicles. And if that’s not enough to satisfy the automobile aficionado, the NASCAR Hall of Fame is ready to start its engine. The huge high-tech edifice, which opens in Charlotte in the spring of 2010, honors the history and heritage of NASCAR.