Charlotte Motor Speedway - despite its name - is not in Charlotte. It sits in Concord, Cabarrus County, and has since O. Bruton Smith broke ground on it in 1959.
The city hosts the Coca-Cola 600, a four-lane NHRA dragway, a clay oval, two Cup team campuses, NASCAR's R&D center, and a broadcast production facility that ran 500-plus live events in 2022.
Racing is not an event Concord hosts. It is the local industry.
Charlotte Motor Speedway anchors everything: A 1.5-mile superspeedway on nearly 2,000 acres, open since 1960, running more than 300 days a year.
The Coca-Cola 600 is the Cup schedule's longest race: 600 miles, every Memorial Day weekend, starting in afternoon heat and finishing under lights.
zMAX Dragway was a world first: Four lanes of drag strip, opened in 2008, nothing like it existed anywhere before.
The Dirt Track brings a third racing format: A four-tenths-mile clay oval across Highway 29 from the speedway, running World of Outlaws and sprint-car championships.
Hendrick Motorsports and RFK Racing build their cars here: Two Cup teams with full engineering and fabrication operations inside city limits.
NASCAR's technical and media arms are based here: R&D, safety testing, vehicle inspection, and live broadcast production all run from Concord facilities.
North Carolina's racing cluster centers on this area: Roughly 90% of NASCAR's top-series teams operate within 90 miles of Charlotte, and Concord sits in the middle of that radius.
Charlotte Motor Speedway: The 1960 Track That Isn't in Charlotte
Smith and Curtis Turner broke ground in 1959. The first World 600 ran on June 19, 1960.
The track went into Chapter 11 reorganization in 1961 - ticket sales weren't covering costs on a new 1.5-mile superspeedway with 24-degree banked corners and a listed capacity of 95,000.
Smith regained majority control in 1975 and hired H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler.
The two of them added thousands of grandstand seats, 57 luxury suites, and Smith Tower, a seven-story, 135,000-square-foot building that opened in 1988.
Condominiums above Turn 1 went up in 1984, with more units added in 1991. In 1992, 1,200 permanent light fixtures made it the first modern superspeedway to run a night race.
The 600-Mile Race and What the ROVAL Experiment Proved
The Coca-Cola 600 runs every Memorial Day weekend. Six hundred miles means four distinct tire cycles, fuel windows that compound across the race distance, and track temperatures that drop sharply after sundown.
The fall Cup weekend took a different shape starting in 2018, when the speedway introduced the ROVAL - a 2.28-mile, 17-turn layout combining the oval banking with an infield road course, frontstretch and backstretch chicanes, and a 45-foot elevation change.
That 2018 race was the first road-course event in Cup Series Playoff history. The 2026 fall event reverts to the standard oval as the Bank of America 400.
zMAX Dragway: The Track That Needed a New Category
No drag strip anywhere ran four lanes before zMAX opened in 2008 on 46.5 acres next to The Dirt Track.
Two pedestrian tunnels under the racing surface - also a first - let fans cross without climbing. Thirty thousand grandstand seats and 40 suites.
The NHRA schedules two national events here per year.
The spring event runs four-wide: four cars launching simultaneously, which multiplies tire smoke, decibels, and reaction-time variables at the Christmas tree in ways a two-car launch doesn't approach.
In 2025, four-wide racing entered the NHRA Countdown to the Championship for the first time, making Concord's format a direct factor in the national title race.
The Dirt Track and the Third Racing Format in One District
The Dirt Track opened in May 2000, a four-tenths-mile clay oval with roughly 14,000 stadium-style seats.
World of Outlaws sprint cars, late models, modifieds, and monster trucks run here on a regular schedule.
The World of Outlaws World Finals brings multiple dirt-series championships to a single multi-day event each fall.
An oval, a four-lane strip, and a clay track occupy the same stretch of Cabarrus County road.
Two Cup Team Campuses, One City
Rick Hendrick started his team in 1984. Forty years later, it holds 15 Cup championships and 320 points-paying victories - both all-time records.
The Concord campus covers roughly 500,000 square feet across more than 150 acres and runs Cup entries for Alex Bowman, William Byron, Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, and Corey Day.
RFK Racing operates a separate Concord facility with a race shop, pit practice pad, human performance center, museum, and gift shop open to the public.
Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher, and Ryan Preece race under the RFK banner.
NASCAR's Research, Inspection, and Broadcast Operations
The NASCAR R&D Center in Concord is the first such facility owned and operated by a major motorsports sanctioning body rather than a team.
Safety equipment testing, engine performance research, and pre-race inspection happen here.
A 58,000-square-foot production facility adjacent to the R&D Center was built for 125 NASCAR Productions and Motor Racing Network staff.
In 2018, the building handled 200 live events. By 2022, that number had reached 500.
Other Factors Pulling Racing Toward Concord
North Carolina made stock car racing its official state sport in 2011. In NASCAR's inaugural 1948 season, 30 of 52 races were run at North Carolina tracks.
The first Strictly Stock race - the class that became the modern Cup Series - was held at Charlotte's three-quarter-mile dirt track in June 1949.
The speedway's estimated annual regional economic impact runs around $450 million.
Speedway Christmas routes visitors through a three-mile light display in the infield and grandstands.
The Charlotte AutoFair, held twice a year on the property, is one of the Southeast's largest car shows and swap-meet events.
Concord has a 65-year-old superspeedway, the world's only four-lane drag strip, a clay oval running championship dirt events, two Cup team campuses, NASCAR's inspection operation, and a broadcast center that produced 500 live events in a single year.
The sport's biggest name is on the sign, but the work happens in Concord.