Elliott wants event at Fairgrounds
Driver loves Nashville but likes track where he raced legendary dad even more
To be clear, Chase Elliott will take a victory anywhere he can get one.
But not long after lifting the celebratory guitar he earned for winning at Nashville Superspeedway, Elliott couldn’t help but wonder if NASCAR is still at the wrong race track.
NASCAR’S most popular driver is partial to the track at Nashville Fairgrounds. When he heard the Cup Series would return to the area in 2021 — but at the D-shaped oval in Lebanon, some 40 minutes from the downtown hot spots — he was not pleased.
“One snooze fest at that joint will put the nail in the coffin of the fairgrounds, bummer,” Elliott tweeted in 2020.
He has now raced two consecutive years at the superspeedway, collected a win and the guitar late Sunday night, and his opinion hasn’t changed. Elliott wants to race at the fairgrounds, where his Hall of Fame father often did and the two went head-to-head last summer in the Superstar Racing Experience. Chase won the race.
“Yeah, look, I wish we were at the fairgrounds, for the record, but I’m glad we’re at least in the market,” Elliott said. “This is a cool town. It’s a great place to be. It’s a great place to race. It’s a town that I think embraces us, and we embrace the people that are here.”
The Nashville market has indeed become a hot motorsports target since 2019 when NASCAR shifted its season-ending awards ceremony from Las Vegas to Lower Broadway. Nashville Superspeedway was added to NASCAR’S 2021 schedule, Indycar debuted a downtown street race that was a smashing success and SRX will return to the fairgrounds for a second consecutive year in two weeks.
Formula One: The racing organization is close to renewing its United States broadcast rights with ESPN — for an exponentially higher price — but the sides have not finalized a deal, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations. The sides are working on a three-year contract, the people said. Although the numbers have not been finalized, ESPN would pay something in the range of $75 million to $90 million per year, one of the people said. The people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss financial matters and the contract is still being negotiated. ESPN did not pay any rights fees in 2018 when NBC Sports Group dropped F1 after five seasons, leaving the series without a U.S. home. ESPN has paid $5 million per year from 2019-22, meaning the price tag to keep F1 will be up to 18 times higher. F1 ratings have dramatically improved over the past five seasons.