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Takeaways from NASCAR’s 2025 schedule releases
By Matt Weaver,
8 hours ago
The 2025 NASCAR Cup, Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series schedules are out and the highlights include the previously announced events at Bowman Gray Stadium and Mexico City but also the return of racing at Rockingham Speedway and more races for the Truck Series.
Here are the key takeaways:
Mexico City
The only change to the 2024 schedule was Iowa Speedway, which was added when an agreement to race in Montreal at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve never materialized. For next year, the glitzy addition is a race south of the border at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, home of the Formula 1 Grand Prix.
The modern NASCAR has decided to aggressively pursue new markets and expanding fan demographics with races in Downtown Los Angeles and Chicago and now Mexico City. It aligns with a general major league sports philosophy too with the National Football League and Major League Baseball also taking events overseas.
In event co-promoter OCESA, NASCAR has a partner that is accustomed to bringing major sporting events like F1 to the city and will be able to deliver an event to a country that has a legitimate appetite for the sport around a countryman in Daniel Suárez.
The race comes at the expense of Richmond Raceway, which loses one of its two races, a reflection of both the current short track racing product and attendance there in recent years.
While NASCAR has continued to expand its horizons towards new markets and international races, it has also paid homage to its past with Cup Series events at North Wilkesboro and Bowman Gray Stadium. With 38 events, counting the two non-points races, and several tracks still having two dates, it provides flexibility for both NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports to get creative and serve several different masters moving forward.
In Bowman Gray, located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, NASCAR has both the old-school track appeal to classic fans in the market where more people watch than any other while also being a short drive from teams from the Charlotte area after spending three years running The Busch Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
It’ll be a little chilly as the afternoon goes on but this is a made for television event with 17,000 of the most diehard NASCAR fans imaginable not caring what the temperature is.
Speaking of paying tribute to the past, Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina is back for the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series. This is one the legendary NASCAR speedways, having hosted the Cup Series from 1965 to 2004.
It’s now owned by Raleigh businessman Dan Lovenheim and this event is promoted by Spire Sports+Entertainment’s promotional arm, Track Enterprises, which had promoted a race at Milwaukee Mile the past two years.
Rockingham hosted the Truck Series in 2012 and 2013 but attendance dropped off so much that second year that it no longer became viable by 2014. As is always the case, every fan who lamented the loss of Rockingham, like they did North Wilkesboro, has a chance to validate those claims by supporting the revival of another NASCAR classic in Richmond, County, North Carolina.
Lime Rock Trucks
Lime Rock Motorsports Park in Connecticut, under a variety of owners over the years, has long clamored for a NASCAR event of some kind. Current owners Charles Mallory, Dicky Riegel, and Bill Rueckert, and also Parker Kligerman, has made it happen.
Expanded Truck Schedule
With the Truck Series adding races at Rockingham, Lime Rock, New Hampshire, Michigan and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, the third-tier division is now up to 25 races, the most since 2011 after years of running 22-23 races over the past decade-plus. The schedule also closes the long gaps between races for the series, with the longest off-time now coming from April 19 to May 1 early in the season. From there, it’s a grind.
The new races come at the expense of Gateway, a race at Kansas, Circuit of the Americas and Milwaukee.
There were several race weekends who received new dates just in the name of trying to avoid rain or having a more comfortable experience for fans in attendance. For example, Michigan in August has been plagued by rain three years in a row and run on Monday two years in a row. So now that race is in early June. Bristol in the spring moves from March to April. Nashville goes from late June to June 1. Dover moves to July 20. Iowa is in August (right before the Knoxville Nationals, no less) instead of July.
New look Cup playoffs
The regular season finale is once again at Daytona and the Olympic break was the only reason it wasn’t this year. Gateway and New Hampshire are now playoff races at the expense of Watkins Glen and Atlanta, which are set to make their playoff debuts next month, with Talladega moving from its traditional Round of 12 date to the Round of 8. Phoenix Raceway is again the championship race, a continued reflection of the $178 million renovation project completed in 2018.
Chicago is back
The street race will be back for its third season, as it was a one year agreement with two mutual options, but it’s no secret that NASCAR would eventually like to solicit an open bidding process for cities that would like to host a similar event.
NASCAR also still needs to fill a void in Southern California and rumors about San Diego have already started to present themselves on the heels of the schedule announcement on Thursday.
There’s just one off week in the NASCAR regular season, and its for Easter Sunday, and even then, NASCAR has scheduled the Xfinity Series and Truck Series races at Rockingham for that weekend. This comes one year after NASCAR enjoyed a two-plus week summer break for the Oympics and some teams asking for an imposed summer shutdown period like Formula 1 has. The industry suffers from burnout now that so many jobs have been cut and NASCAR cutting an off-week to avoid the peak NFL schedule so the sport will continue to be a grid.
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