Senior NASCAR Holdings executive CHIP WILE plans to exit his role after the season and leave the company, and his oversight of the sport\u2019s race tracks will now be assumed by BEN KENNEDY. Having started on the team side of stock car racing for 13 years with Bill Davis Racing and Turner Motorsports, Wile eventually joined the governing body of the sport and rose the ranks, becoming its first chief track properties officer in early 2021. That role was created as part of the acquisition of the legacy ISC speedways, a move NASCAR made to accelerate its turnaround of the sport. <\/p>\n
For the nearly five years since, Wile has led the day-to-day oversight of NASCAR\u2019s owned and managed venues, which total over a dozen. With NASCAR having one of the longest seasons in sports at nearly 10 months, Wile has been a frequent flier, traveling to the tune of over 200 days a year. Wile — a 2017 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree<\/a> — told colleagues in recent weeks that he wants to spend more time with his family and three teenaged children before they reach college age, according to people familiar with the matter. As a result, he plans to leave NASCAR after the 2025 season ends in early November.<\/p>\n Contacted by SBJ, Wile confirmed his plans and added: \u201cWhat the FRANCE family has done for me and our family is beyond measure. They have changed our life and I am so grateful. But at some point you have to take a step back and say, \u2018I\u2019ve got four years left with my boys (before college) and being on an airplane every weekend isn\u2019t what I want to be doing.\u2019 \u2026 It\u2019s an honor to work in the sport, but everything in life comes with some sort of sacrifice.\u201d <\/p>\n FAST TRACK: Starting with NASCAR through its Motor Racing Network in 2012, Wile became president of Darlington Raceway in South Carolina the next year. There, he helped ideate and execute the sport\u2019s first throwback weekend in 2015<\/a>. By 2016, he was asked to take over the same role at the sport\u2019s most important venue<\/a>, Daytona International Speedway, replacing JOIE CHITWOOD III as Chitwood became COO of ISC. He held that role until April 2021, when he assumed his current position. After NASCAR\u2019s five-year track sanctions expired in 2020, the sport has started experimenting with racing at new types of venues in recent years like the L.A. Coliseum<\/a>, city streets of Chicago<\/a> and a naval base near San Diego<\/a>. Wile has helped run the operations of those fresh events while maintaining the permanent facilities around the nation like Daytona, Darlington, Talladega Superspeedway and Richmond Raceway. NASCAR did not add any further details when contacted by SBJ. Wile said he is evaluating what his next job will be. \u201cIt\u2019s time. Ben is going to do incredible things for the sport. It\u2019s just time for me to do something else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior NASCAR Holdings executive CHIP WILE plans to exit his role after the season and leave the company,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[51027,6856,425,99],"class_list":["post-181144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-daytona-500","tag-leadership","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}