The 2026 NASCAR season has been special for some good schedule changes. With a newly renewed fan interest in the potential return of the Kentucky Speedway, a track executive has addressed whether that is feasible.

Addressing the state of the Kentucky Speedway on "The Gluckcast" hosted by NASCAR reporter Jeff Gluck, Speedway Motorsports COO Mike Burch, who oversees it among other NASCAR tracks, highlighted the external pressure on racetracks there.

"There's a lot of competition for the use of that land," Said Burch. "It sits right on the Interstate. There's a new airport that's opening up right down the road. So, you look at a lot of these facilities, and you look out in the perimeter, and you start to see warehouses and data centers and development, and there's a lot of real estate pressure."

He further highlighted how owners are left with a difficult choice between the financial returns of operating a track and the high value of selling the land for other uses.

"One thing that's not being built is racetracks, and the land continues to get more and more valuable every day. At some point, if you are the owner of one of these tracks, and we're seeing that at a much higher rate at smaller tracks, families or individuals are saying, you know what, I can make as much money on the interest in selling this as I am in operating the racetrack," Burch said on The Gluckcast.

Burch didn’t explicitly rule out a return, but there were reasons why the track left in the first place, and those challenges continue to exist today.

Moreover, adding a race at Kentucky requires removing a date from another facility, which would negatively impact another venue's business model and corporate partners.

In the current season, NASCAR has most notably returned to the Chicagoland Speedway, and North Wilkesboro has been promoted to a point-paying race.

However, the track that has become the talk of town last weekend is the EchoPark Speedway at Atlanta.

The reconfiguration of Atlanta and how it helped NASCAR

In the same interaction with Jeff Gluck, Mike Burch also shared several insights regarding the Echopark Speedway, including its reconfiguration. He credited the team at iRacing and EVP Steve Meyers as instrumental in the design process.

"This is the first track that was designed in iRacing and had significant testing done competitively with the drivers on iRacing, actually racing before we touched one bit of dirt," Burch explained. "So, we had an indication that this was going to work really well, despite some of the real-world naysayers, because we had seen it kind of play out and how the cars would interact with it.

But it's exceeded our expectations as far as putting on quality racing, and we continue to have great partnership and support."

Burch also stated that the track has successfully reversed declining interest and is seeing growth in attendance.

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Written by

Aaradhya Singh

Edited by

Yash Kotak