NASCAR Honors Its Pioneers:
NASCAR has always stuck close to its roots and there isn’t another sport that honors the tradition and its pioneers quite like the boys, and girls, of auto racing. That is why when NASCAR declared they were building a shrine to honor their history in Charlotte, North Carolina, everyone knew that it would be of epic proportion. Indeed it was.
It was of no shock to anyone when NASCAR announced that Charlotte would be the site for the Hall of Fame. Nearly 75% of all employees associated with NASCAR lives and works in the Charlotte area. Team owner Rick Hendrick was the key player involved in locating the land and securing the bids for the development.
When the ground breaking took place on January 26th, 2007 it was clear to see that this was an important event and the NASCAR Hall Of Fame would mean as much to its creators as it would the fans. $160 million later, the Hall is as great as any in the Country.
The doors opened and the first fans entered on May 11th, 2010 and they have not slowed down yet. Most of the Hall’s success comes from the different attractions that serve to please a wide variety of fans in general.
From the older generation that hold the legends such as Fireball Roberts and Tim Flock close to their hearts, to the modern era fan that drives up to see Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt’s Daytona 500 cars, NASCAR Hall Of Fame has something for the whole family to see.
Plenty To See At NASCAR Hall Of Fame
When visiting the Hall Of Fame, keep in mind that there is much more to see than merely pictures of drivers past and present and a few classic cars. Visitors have four floors in which to attempt to take everything in.
Considering all the unique attractions and displays, it would be well advised to set aside a couple of days to enjoy everything there is to see. Trying to view all the different things there is to see in one day only leads to rushing through, possibly missing important things and failing to truly enjoy the experience entirely.
On the bottom floor is a movie room that has video screenings describing all The Hall’s features, as well as clips from some of the greatest races in the sports long history. Think of it as a video tour through time. Taking visitors from the dusty dirt roads of the moonshine runners stomping grounds, to the 3 wide finishes at the Daytona 500, these video tours are a must see for first time visitors.
The videos continue up to the 2nd floor, where visitors will also find a replica of the 33 degree banked turns at Talladega, referred to as “Glory Road”. Viewers of Showtimes’ “Inside NASCAR” will quickly recognize “Studio #43″, named after the historic car number of King Richard Petty.
The 3rd floor draws much of the NASCAR Hall Of Fame attention. Located in the center is a 360 degree “Wall Of Honor”, in which the photos of drivers from every era are proudly displayed. However, the real excitement is the race weekend simulator that lets fans enjoy a race weekend from the team perspective. It is the favorite among the children age 3-83.
There is so much more to see and enjoy during a visit to the NASCAR Hall Of Fame. There is a restaurant, the Hall Of Fame Cafe, Buffalo Wild Wings, a ballroom and simply way too much to try and experience all in one day.
That is one of the best tips anyone can give a potential first time visitor, plan a two day trip if you truly want to get the full NASCAR Hall Of Fame experience. Also purchase an audio tour guide for $5. The device gives you a detailed description and history of any attraction you point it at. The audio tour guide is by far the best $5 you will spend all day.
The Places To See And Stay While Enjoying Charlotte’s NASCAR Hall Of Fame
By taking one of the many bus tours, visitors will see the Hall in all its glory, plus get an up close view of a racing garage, pit crew practice and a variety of other interesting sites and sounds associated with NASCAR. The bus tours are scheduled every few hours, so getting one isn’t too difficult.
There are areas where a visitor can become a pit crew member, visit inside an actual race hauler, and get an idea of what the life of a team member is really like on race day. The driving simulators alone will have you not wanting to leave.
Those that choose to plan a trip to the NASCAR Hall of Fame and decide they need an extra day to take it all in, need to book their hotel rooms in advance. Trying to find vacancies in and around the Charlotte area, especially near the Convention Center, in uptown Charlotte, where The Hall is located, can be very difficult. On race weekends even more so.
The Hotels closest to NASCAR Hall of Fame are The Hampton Inn, The Hilton Garden Inn, TheWestin Hotel and The Hilton Center City. All of these hotels are within walking distance of The Hall Of Fame, as well as the train station and tour bus rentals.
The NASCAR Hall Of Fame has a huge video room that displays races for visitors to see on race day. On Saturday and Sunday, the Hall is pretty crowded with visitors waiting to watch the race, taking simulator rides and touring the facility. So if you are not from around Charlotte and want to enjoy every aspect The Hall Of fame has to offer, it would be best to come through the week.
NASCAR Hall Of Fame Package Deals And Rates
Hours of operation; Open 7 days a week 10am – 6pm Thursday, OCT. 11th 7am-8pm
TICKETS ; ( ADULTS : $19.95) / Children ages 5-12 ($12.95) Seniors (60 and over) $17.95 (Military: $17.95) There are several package deals that offer discounts, such as; ($87.80 Family Pack)/ includes 2 adult tickets, 2 children tickets, 4 simulator rides, 4 cafe vouchers and 4 tickets. Lanyards to hold your tickets. ($26.95) Individual Package Deal / includes one ticket, adult, 1 simulator ride, 1 cafe voucher and 1 lanyard. ($99.80 Adult Combo Pack)/ includes 4 adult tickets, 4 simulator rides, 4 cafe vouchers and 4 lanyards. See more details at NASCAR Hall of Fame.
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On Tuesday, the NASCAR Hall of Fame announced the inductees for next year’s class. Making the cut were Dale Inman, Glen Wood, Cale Yarborough, Richie Evans and Darrell Waltrip.
Though there were a lot of tears surrounding the announcement, all I could feel was indescribable joy at the realization that I wouldn’t have to listen to the sob stories of Darrell Waltrip and why he hasn’t been inducted yet, ever again. Thank you to the voters for sparing us all another year.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years you’ve no doubt been witness to the frequent campaigning by the three-time champion. He was visibly devastated by not making last year’s class – he said “my, feelings are hurt” – and many went on to ask why he wasn’t included.
Waltrip is no doubt worthy of the honor of the Hall of Fame – he has three Cup Series championships and is tied with Bobby Allison and Jeff Gordon for the third spot on the all time wins list (though technically Allison has one more win than Gordon and Waltrip). And there is little question about his contributions to the sport since his retirement from driving. Few people are as visible as he is.
Still, I’m a firm believer that there are some things in life you really shouldn’t ask for. Induction into a Hall of Fame – any Hall of Fame – is one of those things. It’s just… tacky.
Isn’t it more genuine to be given an honor or award when you don’t have to ask for it?
Along the way Waltrip had a lot of supporters – many decrying what they perceived as a snub. And to some extent they were probably right – politics played a role in Waltrip not getting inducted last year. But that doesn’t mean last year’s inductees were any less deserving than Waltrip.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame was not created to glorify one single driver or drivers – it was created to celebrate the sport and those who have made it great. Turning the selection process into an open campaign and the analysis of that process into a blood sport is disrespectful to those who await induction and to those who have already been inducted.
For all those lucky enough and worthy enough to be considered for induction, the time will eventually come.
“Time will sort all of those things out,” Jeff Burton said. “If you’re honored enough to get into the Hall of Fame, you shouldn’t lose sleep about when you got into the Hall of Fame.”
May all future Hall of Fame inductees heed Burton’s wisdom, and take note of this very long spectacle and not repeat it.
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Do you notice in every sport how quickly the complaining starts when said sport’s hall of fame nominees and then inductees are announced? Unfortunately the status quo has been maintained in NASCAR. And as such, last week when the five new nominees were named for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, the usual brain trust set forth in complaining about why another driver, owner, crew chief etc. should have been nominated instead.
However minor, some amount of controversy has surrounded the last two classes to our Hall of Fame. As I’m sure many of you recall, in the first year it was that David Pearson got passed over for the likes of Dale Earnhardt, Bill France Jr. and Sr., Richard Petty and Junior Johnson. This year, Pearson got in, but it was Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip who didn’t (and some argued should have).
So inevitably when the Hall announced the nominees for the 2012 class, there was going to be someone, somewhere, unhappy with who was selected, or as was the case, not selected. And this year it was the question of why Wendell Scott wasn’t nominated over H. Clay Earles, Bobby Isaac, Cotton Owens, Les Richter and Leonard Wood (all, incidentally, men who contributed a great deal to the sport).
The inherent problem with a hall of fame selection process is that deserving people are going to get left out year in and year out. At this very early stage of this particular hall of fame, deciding who contributed most is nothing short of difficult. Take the Junior Johnson, David Pearson debate. While Pearson is arguably the best driver ever to wheel a racecar in NASCAR, Johnson’s folk hero status (not to mention winning ways) did an immense amount of good in bringing the sport into the mainstream. It was the Silver Fox vs. The Last American Hero. How do you decide?
Currently waiting to be selected are 25 guys who did a lot for this sport – that’s not to say though that there are 25 or 50 or 100 others who aren’t on the list who didn’t do just as much. It’s just going to take time to assure all those who should be inducted, are inducted.
I ask you, be patient, be respectful of those in the nomination process and enjoy these moments to relive the history of our sport through some of our sport’s biggest names. Your guy’s time will come.
Should NASCAR be doing a better job protecting its brand? I think we all probably know the answer to this question, but humor me.
Consider these news stories from yesterday: NASCAR is being sued by a company who attempted to affiliate themselves with the “NASCAR Performance” program; there are new owners of the NASCAR Plaza tower; and losses at the NASCAR Hall of Fame have been trimmed.
Now consider the common thread. They’re all stories where NASCAR’s bottom line has gotten in the way of them maintaining the integrity of their brand – and resulted in a ton of unnecessary and unneeded negative attention.
If you’re not from Charlotte, or aren’t familiar with the building, the NASCAR Plaza is a 20-story office tower attached to the city owned NASCAR Hall of Fame in Uptown Charlotte. NASCAR occupies about 118,000 square feet of the building, but it isn’t owned by NASCAR (or the City of Charlotte for that matter). It was built, and until recently, owned by Lauth Property Group. For the last several months the building’s lien holders, Wells Fargo and Regions Bank, have been locked in a legal battle over foreclosure of the tower. Trinity Capital just bought the building from the two banks.
That building’s literal connection to the NASCAR Hall of Fame (we’re all well versed on the issues there) has made that block of Uptown the source of a lot of around town snickering. The problem with these two buildings is that NASCAR wanted them, wanted their name on them, but didn’t want to pay for them. So with the benefits of getting their Hall and the vanity of their name on a high-rise in the Uptown skyline, they also got all the baggage that came with that.
This brings me to the lawsuit NASCAR is facing from Advance Lubricants. The company claims NASCAR illegally terminated a contract they had signed to be part of the “NASCAR Performance” program. Not speaking to the veracity of the lawsuit (I really couldn’t care), why does NASCAR even have a performance program? Obviously I know the answer to this, but do they not get how this stuff cheapens their brand?
My point is, NASCAR does these things that probably look great on paper, and are probably making them a good deal of money (or in the case of the tower and the Hall not costing them a lot of money), but they end up doing damage to their brand by the constant negative attention.
For instance, with the NASCAR Plaza, there were probably a dozen or more stories between the Observer and the Business Journal saying “NASCAR tower in foreclosure.” That doesn’t reflect poorly on Lauth, it reflects poorly on NASCAR.
The same thing with the NASCAR Hall. If it were privately owned by NASCAR they wouldn’t have to release attendance figures. Instead as they announce their inductees for the year there is a front page story in the Charlotte Observer talking about how bad attendance is, and how big of a deficit the Hall is going to run.
It’s true we live and operate in an environment that’s completely dominated by ads, sponsorships and 43 rolling billboards – and to the Hall, we’re in a sports environment where public financing of sports related projects is the cool thing to do. But you would think the behemoth at least partially responsible for creating this environment would have a little more sense when it came to maintaining their very valuable brand. I have my doubts.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame took center stage a couple of weeks ago as they announced their second class of inductees. The morning after the announcement though the Charlotte Observer’s front page story about the Hall wasn’t concerned with the class, instead, its focus was the money problems the Hall is plagued with.
For the last several weeks the Hall of Fame has been a popular topic in Charlotte. There is talk of budget cuts (to the tune of $3 million), layoffs, reduced hours, and delayed royalty payments to NASCAR. Things are so uncertain the editorial board of the Observer in recent weeks has taken to slamming the city and the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority (CRVA) over the Hall.
“What’s built is built. Let us hope the hall builds attendance over time, and that fading fan enthusiasm for NASCAR revives. Otherwise, Charlotte will have to figure out what to do with a huge, white elephant building in a very prominent spot.”
As a recent Charlotte Business Journal article asked, “NASCAR Hall of Fame party’s already over?” Ah, yeah.
Chalk it up to what you want – bad economy, waning interest in the sport etc. – the fact is, the Hall couldn’t have opened at a worse time. On top of that NASCAR is contending with this public-private partnership that they really don’t have any control over.
I don’t think the Hall is headed toward a terrible fate, but this conversation is really not good for the long term health of the project. I have to wonder at what point NASCAR steps in to make sure this doesn’t turn into a ‘white elephant building’ in Uptown Charlotte. Surely they won’t let their Hall of Fame fail. Then again I wouldn’t have thought they would have allowed the conversation surrounding their hall be so negative (not that they really have a choice in the matter).
I understand the desire to build this thing with someone else’s money ($200 million worth), but the noise that has surrounded the Hall of Fame and the uncertainty that now surrounds the project begs the question, what is NASCAR’s role going to be? What is their commitment beyond what was initially agreed upon?
One thing I think we all can agree on is that the NASCAR Hall of Fame deserves better than this.
You know that old adage, “you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time”? Well, welcome to the selection process for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
This year’s inductees were announced on Wednesday – and as with last year there was disappointment and disagreement. It’s hard to argue David Pearson, Bud Moore, Ned Jarrett, Lee Petty, and Bobby Allison don’t deserve inclusion into the hall.
Still, some were questioning today why Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough weren’t included this year. Waltrip has 84 wins and three championships to his credit and Yarborough has 83 wins and three championships. Waltrip was quite upset. Their time is coming – just not this year.
The fact is, these two aren’t the only ones who could have been included in the second class. What about Raymond Parks? If he had lived another four months would he have been included in this year’s class? Or how about Dale Inman?
The question is at this point, what gets valued over everything else? Should on-track tangibles and intangibles be more important than off-track tangibles and intangibles? Certainly Bruton Smith (who by the way has been inexplicably left off the list of Hall candidates for the last two years) and T. Wayne Robertson did/have done just as much, if not more for the sport as Bud Moore and Lee Petty.
And then comes the prestige factor. Do you allow Cup guys in before considering prolific winners in lower series like Jack Ingram, or Richie Evans? After all this isn’t the Cup Series Hall of Fame (as I’ve seen some suggest), it’s the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
I think we all know this isn’t an easy process, and the questions I’ve posed don’t really have yes or no answers. Right now, we as observers of the sport struggle with who to induct because there are so many great candidates – if Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip had been inducted this year over say, Bobby Allison and Ned Jarrett, people still would have been screaming about it. ‘Why didn’t they induct Ned Jarrett and Bobby Allison this year?’ It’s just the nature of the beast.
I think this process has been run about as well as it possibly could be. Still, it’s not, and never can be a perfect process with a perfect outcome. I find it very disappointing that some have taken to questioning the integrity of the voters. It’s disrespectful not just to them, but to those who have been selected for induction.
As I said at the start, in this process “you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.” Welcome to NASCAR.
Filed under: NASCAR Hall of Fame, NASCAR
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Filed under: Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR Awards, Sprint Cup, NASCAR Hall of Fame
Junior Johnson - Last American Hero Is Hall of Famer originally appeared on Motorsports FanHouse on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:11:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.