NASCAR Releases Schedule Through June 21

We saw NASCAR roar back to the track on Sunday with the Real Heroes 400 coming to you from Darlington. That marked the first race on the circuit since the March 8 FanShield 500, which was won by Joey Logano in Phoenix. The Real Heroes 500 kicked off a hectic stretch of seven races across the NASCAR Cup Series, the Xfinity Series and the Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series over an 11-day stretch. Those races were scheduled to take place at Darlington, where the Toyota 500 will take place Wednesday, and Charlotte Motor Speedway over Memorial Day weekend.

Over the weekend, the circuit announced their plans for the month of June, both with laying out where races will take place and which tracks ended up having their potential race weekends postponed or canceled for this season. After the races at Charlotte, including the Coca-Cola 600, NASCAR will head toward the Smoky Mountains as they go to Bristol Motor Speedway. The Xfinity Series will hold a race there on May 30 while the NASCAR Cup race takes place May 31. Following Bristol, NASCAR heads down to the Peach State and Atlanta Motor Speedway for a series of races. The Xfinity and Truck Series will run their races on June 6 while the NASCAR Cup series race takes place on June 7. That will be followed up by a Wednesday night NASCAR Cup race at Martinsville Speedway on June 10.

NASCAR teams will likely need air travel after that race at Martinsville as the circuit shifts down to the Sunshine State for their next set of races. The Xfinity and Truck Series take to Homestead-Miami Speedway for races on June 13 with the NASCAR Cup series race going the next day. In the following week, Talladega becomes the host track with the ARCA Series and the Xfinity Series each running on June 20. The NASCAR Cup Series follows up on June 21. As was to be expected, all those races are going to be run without fans in attendance.

In a statement made over the weekend, Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR executive vice-president and chief racing development officer, had this to say:

"As we prepare for our return to racing at Darlington Raceway on Sunday, the industry has been diligent in building the return-to-racing schedule. We are eager to expand our schedule while continuing to work closely with the local governments in each of the areas we will visit. We thank the many government officials for their guidance, as we share the same goal in our return -- the safety for our competitors and the communities in which we race."

With those realignments of the schedule, several tracks saw their races pulled off the schedule. NASCAR announced that the NASCAR Cup Series events slated to take place at Kansas Speedway (May 30-31) and Michigan International Speedway (June 5-7) have been postponed. In addition, the Xfinity Series race slated for the Mid-Ohio raceway on May 30 and the Truck Series event scheduled for Texas Motor Speedway on June 5 were also postponed.

Two-plus months without racing has forced NASCAR to try and put their schedule together in order to have as complete a season as possible. You have to give credit to them for putting together a cohesive plan to ensure taking the fewest risks as far as the coronavirus goes. They showed that they could pull off their plan and put forth a highly entertaining race on Sunday afternoon. How the rest of the schedule plays out remains to be seen. The next race that is slated to take place after the current list that we covered above would be slated for Pocono Raceway on June 27-28 in Pennsylvania. Governor Tom Wolf said he spoke with NASCAR last week about the races and said that the state wasn’t ready to make a decision:

"We actually had conversations with NASCAR and I told them Pennsylvania is not ready to make a decision. The area that they want to have this gathering in is actually in the red right now, red zone, red phase, so I told them Pennsylvania is not ready to make a decision.''

On Monday, Wolf said that if Monroe County, which is where Pocono Raceway is located, is in the yellow phase when the race is scheduled to go off, and NASCAR sticks with their current plan, then the races could take place as scheduled. At least at this stage, there is a plan in effect and we know that there will be racing going over the next month. That’s something to be happy about all things considered.