Qualla: Hickory Motor Speedway

Hickory Motor Speedway: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 18, 1952, a crowd of 4,500 packed dirt grandstands outside Newton, North Carolina, to watch Gwyn Staley win the first race at Charlie Combs' new Hickory Speedway. Two months later, lights went in for night racing and Staley won the first one of those too. The next season, NASCAR's Grand National series - the top one, the series that would become the Cup - showed up. Tim Flock won the inaugural Cup-level race here on May 16, 1953. For the next eighteen years, the biggest names in stock-car racing came through this short Catawba Valley track. Then NASCAR's rules changed, the long-distance races consolidated at superspeedways, and Hickory was left to run its own kind of racing on its own kind of night.

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Hickory Motor Speedway: The Ned Jarrett Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ownership changed hands a dozen times through the 1950s and 1960s. Charlie Combs sold to Grafton Burgess in 1959. Burgess sold to Charlotte developers Bill Edwards and Ed Griffin in 1967 for about $144,000. The new owners paved the track in August 1967 - the dirt era ended overni...

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Hickory Motor Speedway: The Track of Champions

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hickory's nickname is 'the Track Too Tough to Tame,' but its other nickname - 'the Birthplace of the NASCAR Stars' - is closer to the historical record. Drivers learned their craft here on Saturday nights. Ned Jarrett raced and managed here. Bobby Isaac, who took the 1970 Cup cha...

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Hickory Motor Speedway: Benny Yount and the COVID Money

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Car dealer Benny Yount bought the track in December 1986 for about a million dollars. His first move was a $100,000 renovation - press boxes, fan amenities, concrete walls in place of guardrails. He has been the constant since. The track was renamed Hickory Motor Speedway in Nove...

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Hickory Motor Speedway: Saturday Nights, Still

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hickory Motor Speedway runs a NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series season every year, plus dates on the CARS Tour and the SMART Modified Tour. The ARCA Menards Series East added a 150-lap race in 2026. The seating capacity, depending on which newspaper you trust, is somewhere ...

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