NASCAR President Steve O’Donnell appeared as a guest on the “Door, Bumper, Clear” podcast on April 14 and said that “he wants to see NASCAR return to Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway more than ever” and that the zMAX Series “was proof NASCAR belongs in Nashville,” according to Mike Organ of the Nashville TENNESSEAN. However, O’Donnell said that the effort to get NASCAR back to Nashville “is an ‘uphill battle.’” At the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, NASCAR HOFer and JR Motorsports co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran in the Tootsie’s Music City Showdown late model stock car race before a “capacity crowd.” The zMAX Series CARS Tour race, in which Earnhardt finished 12th and his teammate Caden Kvapil won, served as a “litmus test for O’Donnell on what NASCAR’s return to Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway would be like.” The effort to bring NASCAR back to Nashville for the first time since 1984 has “faced resistance from some local residents and advocacy groups” since it was first proposed in 2021 by Speedway Motorsports President and CEO Marcus Smith, who “also wants to renovate the track.” O’Donnell said, “When you think about the noise and everything, I mean they’ve got concerts (at nearby Geodis Park) and all kinds of stuff, they’ve got soccer.” He added, “Then there’s a pretty vocal group there about noise ordinances, what can you do? But there’s been a lot of plans put together around what we could do to offset some of that” (Nashville TENNESSEAN, 4/14).
