Every year the racing world comes together during Memorial Day Weekend, filled with energy, unique shows on the weekend leading up to a tripleheader on Sunday that features three crown jewel races in the biggest asphalt series on the planet.
Fans wake up to watch Monaco, get a nice break before seeing the Indianapolis 500, and grill out through the night as the Coca Cola 600 comes on the TV near the sunset.
Publisher Chris Williams compared the two events here:
Publisher @ChrisMWilliams checks in to talk about this year's 4th of July racing schedule: pic.twitter.com/WUCf1IYz4N
— Always Race Day (@AlwaysRaceDay) July 2, 2020
Racing kicked off on Wednesday for the weekend but the meat of the schedule for the next three days gets going tonight.
The full slate can be seen below:
We’ll get the weekend started with plenty of action on the dirt tracks that are mostly all racing both Friday and Saturday night:
World of Outlaws Independence Day Shootout
Friday, Saturday
Dirtvision.com
The World of Outlaws got their cross-tour three-day event started off on Thursday night at Cedar Lake Speedway with qualifying for Friday and Saturday’s regular shows. It ended with an odd attempt at elimination races for both classes where drivers that were inverted by 12 spots took advantage to stay near the front for the whole race and win. I’ll applaud the Outlaws for trying something new, but it didn’t go well.
Luckily, when both series race at Cedar Lake the next two nights, we know exactly what to expect and should see a couple of great shows.
Knoxville Championship Cup Series Doubleheader
Friday, Saturday
Dirtvision.com
The Knoxville Championship Cup Series is on track twice this weekend as they make up for lost dates in the schedule. So far this year, Brian Brown is the only weekly driver to win a race in the 410 class.
Ollie’s All-Stars Circuit of Champions Ohio Sprint Speedweek
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
FloRacing
The All Star Circuit of Champions kicks off it’s Ohio Sprint Speedweek on Friday night at Fremont. The race is the first of nine in the next 10 days for the full time teams in the tour and mini-weeks like this always provide some great entertainment. Defending champion Aaron Reutzel remains in the points lead in front of Cory Eliason – who has earned three P2 finishes in the tour’s past five races.
Lucas Oil Late Models @ Muskingum, Portsmouth
Friday, Saturday
Lucas Oil Racing TV
The Lucas Oil Late Models will hit the track a couple of times this weekend as well as part of their return to racing tour. Jimmy Owens leads the standings and is the lone driver in the series with four wins through 19 feature events so far.
USAC Non-Wing Sprint Cars Doubleheader @ Lincoln Park
Friday, Saturday
FloRacing
The USAC sprint cars picked up their season on Wednesday night at Terre Haute where Chris Windom blew the rest of the field away in numerous restarts, and inched closer to Justin Grant in the standings. The series will come to Knoxville Raceway next week for the second annual Corn Belt Nationals.
ARCA Racing Doubleheader weekend
ARCA Friday night | ARCA West Saturday night
MavTV / NBC Fast Pass
The ARCA Menards Series spent the last two weekends on big, drawn out superspeedway courses, but will finally get a pair of short tracks to showcase where these cars are most exciting. The national tour takes on Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis on Friday night while the West series heads to Irwindale on the 4th of July.
IndyCar and NASCAR Xfinity Racing at the IMS Road Course
Saturday – 11:15 a.m. & 2 p.m.
NBC
In maybe one of the only positives to the COVID-19 shutdown of sports, a NASCAR-IndyCar combination weekend is finally happening and it being at one of the marquee tracks for both series. IndyCar and the Xfinity series will take to the road course on Saturday ahead of the Cup race on the oval on Sunday.
IMSA Return to Racing at Daytona
Saturday
NBCSN
The IMSA Sports Car tour will make its return to the race track for the first time since March as it runs at Daytona on Saturday afternoon. The series has only completed two events with one of them being the Rolex 24. Drivers are eager to get back on track and this will act as the night cap to the asphalt action on Saturday.
Formula 1 Return to Racing at the Red Bull Ring
Sunday morning
ESPN2
Formula 1 is returning as well in its first race back since the break as they kick off the tour with back-to-back runs at the Red Bull Ring. Max Verstappen won here last season and it would look really good on Formula 1 if they didn’t have Lewis Hamilton atop the standings for a couple of weeks.
The 27th running of NASCAR’s Brickyard 400
Sunday 3:00 p.m.
NBC
Everything leads up to the annual Cup Series event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The regular season has passed its halfway mark and the playoff picture in NASCAR’s top series is starting to take shape. Don’t be surprised to see an upset or something wild here. Kasey Kahne and Paul Menard in the past 10 years, even, have made this race exciting in surprising circumstances. It could happen again this weekend.
As always, we’ll have all the coverage right here on AlwaysRaceDay.com.