Chase Elliot Wins NASCAR’s All Star Race

NASCAR held its annual All Star race at Bristol Speedway on July 15th, a different venue than the usual one at Charlotte. That’s because a limited number of fans were allowed at the Tennessee track whereas North Carolina would not allow that due to Covid-19 restrictions. Bristol holds 140,000, and 30,000 tickets were available, although estimates were that attendance was in the low 20,000s (no official attendance figures were released). Fans were spread out for social distancing and dismissed by rows after the race. It was the largest crowd for a sporting event in the U.S. since the pandemic shut things down back in March.

The race itself was won by Chase Elliot, who picked up a cool $1 million prize. It was the first All-Star race win for Chase, joining his father Bill Elliot, who won it 1986. Holding the race at a venue other than Charlotte works for the Elliots; Bill won his at Atlanta in the only other time the race hasn’t been held in Charlotte. Chase held off Kyle Busch at the end, winning by just 0.418 seconds.

The next race is the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 on July 19th at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. There will be certain restrictions, but attendance of up to 50% capacity will be allowed. With a track capacity of nearly 182,000, that can still be a lot of people. And Texas has become one of the hardest hit states by Covid-19, so this could get interesting in a couple of weeks.