Drive by Atlanta Motor Speedway this month, and one might get the idea that track president Ed Clark has the same passion for holiday lights as the fictional Clark Griswold of “Christmas Vacation.”
The speedway has been converted into an elaborate display known as the “Gift of Lights.”
For $15 per carload, visitors can drive through the speedway facility, under the main grandstands, around behind the Elliott Grandstand and to the top of the camping area that once was the Nelson Weaver Grandstand. They can listen to Christmas music on car radios and enjoy a lighting display of more than 200 different features totaling approximately a million bulbs.
Like other NASCAR activities, AMS lighting displays can come with the backing of corporate sponsors.
Two other tracks under the Speedway Motorsports umbrella -- Texas Motor Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway -- have joined in offering light shows. Bristol Motor Speedway has displayed Christmas lights for 15 years.
Outside companies create the light shows at AMS, Texas and New Hampshire, but Bristol’s operations staff sets up the speedway lights, and takes them down, each year.
Track spokesperson Lori Worley said Bristol started with 50 features and a million lights along a 3.5-mile route, but now has 200 displays with more than two million lights along a 4.5-mile route. Bristol typically draws 125,000 people per year, with all proceeds benefiting the Bristol Chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities.
Light shows mean more for speedways than holiday spirit. Most NASCAR tracks use light displays to keep revenue flowing annually during the 50 or 51 weeks when there are no Sprint Cup cars on the track.
NASCAR weekends bring in about 80 to 85 percent of the total revenue generated by AMS each year, but other events are critical in keeping the facilities in top condition, Clark said.
“We have 887 acres, two garages, a media center and a lot of other buildings to maintain, so the non-Sprint Cup revenue is critical to us,” Clark said, adding that his track employs 61 fulltime people, 22 of whom are in the operation department.
Clark also is dealing with going from two NASCAR weekends per year since 1960 to one. “This place eats money whether we’re racing or not,” he said.
In expanding its operating plan, AMS has hosted races for Legends cars for years and a Friday Night Drags program in which participants race on pit road. Music concerts are held at the track, along with circus shows, gun shows, private parties and ride-and-drive events in which participants ride around the track in modified race cars. The facility occasionally serves as a production location for the TV and film industry; earlier this year, scenes from “The Walking Dead” were shot at AMS.
One of the more successful rentals has NASCAR garages used for clothing consignment sales. Participants turn out as if Dale Earnhardt Jr. were holding an autograph session.
“They’ll line up all the way to the tunnel to get in,” Clark said.
Clark and his staff previously sat back and waited for potential renters to come to them, but they’re now out soliciting business.
Among the latest offerings, Atlanta-based companies that no longer can afford to fly people to places like Las Vegas for a meeting can come to AMS and hold a team-building session, which includes time on the quarter-mile track driving Legends cars.
“We think there’s a market for it,” Clark said of his track’s latest venture. “Companies can do this, and the people can stay home and sleep in their own beds.”
The veteran track president would like to have a second or third major revenue-generating event to complement his Labor Day weekend NASCAR races. It would have to be something innovative that corporate sponsors would support. He’s considered events centered around barbecue, music or even hot-air balloons. None of the ideas under consideration include auto racing.
“I don’t see a racing event that makes sense,” he said.
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