NASCAR drivers christen fast, new North Wilkesboro surface

NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — The first repave in 43 years at North Wilkesboro Speedway has the historic track looking high-speed and handsome.

Crews completed the resurfacing process in November with a special asphalt mixture and no changes to the configuration.

Speedway Motorsports Inc. officials say they used a similar mix to repave Atlanta Motor Speedway two years ago. They expect it to age faster than traditional asphalt and more quickly create a more “worn-in” surface.

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck and Cup Series got the first crack at the new North Wilkesboro surface during a tire test earlier this week.

Day 1: NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series

Ben Rhodes, Christian Eckes and Corey Heim were the first to test the new surface Tuesday. They reportedly ran laps in the 18-second range – around two seconds faster than Heim’s 20.072-second pole-winning lap last year.

Rhodes pointed out the grip and how different the track felt compared to last year.

“You’re going to see something very unique at Wilkesboro right now, which is high-paced, high-speed racing. It’s going to be more like a super late model race in the Truck Series,” Rhodes said.

He also noticed the track was starting to wear in quickly.

“It’s not even the same race track, and really when we started the day, never having a truck or car or anything run on this place to all the rubber we put on it, it’s not the same race track as eight hours ago. It’s changed a lot, I think it’s rubbered in well,” Rhodes said.

Heim and Eckes believed the track felt more flexible to race on.

“You can make it more of a circle and use a lot more race track. We ran the middle in [Turns] 1 and 2 a lot and were still kind of buried on the bottom in [Turns] 3 and 4 like we were last year. But I do think side-by-side racing is more realistic this year,” Heim noted.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of passing compared to last year. I really like what they’ve done so far,” Eckes expressed.

While Rhodes stopped short of praise, he said the track will “age like a fine wine.”

“What I’ll tell the fans is, if you see a race this year that’s really high pace, a lot of aggression, you know, that’s going to change year over year. It’s going to become more of that old-school Wilkesboro that you’re going to see. So it’s going to get better with time,” Rhodes said.

Day 2: NASCAR Cup Series

Joey Logano, Ty Gibbs and William Byron turned laps Wednesday at North Wilkesboro in their NASCAR Cup Series cars.

Logano immediately pointed out how the track hadn’t lost any of its character. He noticed a “big bump” in an “interesting area” of turn one. He also noticed a “huge bump” that upsets the handling of the cars.

“I don’t think that’s bad,” Logano said. “You can make the thing like glass, I don’t know if that really makes the racing better. I think the fact that it’s got a couple of bumps and some areas where your drivers can make mistakes and jump out of the groove and do different things is just going to promote passing so that’s a good thing.”

While the character is still there, Gibbs said the track feels “a lot different” with the repave.

“ I’ve been to a lot of repaves and this is probably one of the best ones I’ve been to. It definitely has taken some rubber. You can look at how different the line looks. It doesn’t look like a puzzle. There are some tracks on the schedule that they did repaves at, that it just looks like a mess out there,” Gibbs said.

Echoing Gibbs, Byron was encouraged with the test.

“[We] made a lot of progress through the afternoon so I thought it was probably one of our best test days [in terms] of just progress and being able to just get to a spot where I felt like we were a lot better than where we started,” Byron said.

Byron likened the new surface to Richmond after they repaved it in 2004.

“I feel like that was pretty treacherous. A lot of guys would get in crashes. Or, there would be a lot of restart wrecks,” Byron said. “You won’t have the style of comers and goers I don’t think. The guys who are up toward the front will be racing hard and there’s probably just going to be more wrecks.”

Last Year at North Wilkesboro

Last year’s NASCAR All-Star Race and Open at North Wilkesboro saw three cautions for incidents and 16 of the 300 laps run under caution.

In the All-Star Race, Kyle Larson started 16th and took the lead on lap 55 after pitting for new tires on lap 17. He never looked back, leading 145 of the final 146 laps and winning by 4.537 seconds.

All-Star Race Top-10: Larson (led 145 laps), Bubba Wallace, Tyler Reddick, Chase Briscoe, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Daniel Suarez (led 55), Erik Jones, Ty Gibbs, Joey Logano

Larson also won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race the day before. He led 138 of 252 laps and beat Ty Majeski by 0.974 seconds in overtime.

Truck Top-10: Larson, Majeski, Matt DiBenedetto, Carson Hocevar (led 16 laps), Bubba Wallace (led 13), Corey Heim (led 75), Matt Crafton, Chase Purdy, Ross Chastain, Grant Enfinger

NASCAR at North Wilkesboro – 2024 Weekend Schedule

Tuesday and Wednesday, May 14-15

• zMAX CARS Tour

Friday, May 17

• Raymer Oil NASCAR Cup and Craftsman Truck Series Practice
• NASCAR Cup Series Pit Crew Challenge presented by Mechanix Wear

Saturday, May 18

• NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series qualifying and Wright Brand 250 race
• NASCAR Cup Series qualifying heat races

Sunday, May 19

• NASCAR All-Star Open and NASCAR All-Star Race

Officials are set to release all starting times and the All-Star Race format at a later time.