MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Oct. 9, 2026) – Major League Baseball teams get 81 of them. NHL teams get 42 and NBA teams get 41. NFL teams get eight or nine.
We’re talking about home games, where the players get to sleep in their own beds, drive to the venue, play the game, and then drive home, all in front of a friendly crowd genuinely invested in their team’s success.
NASCAR Cup Series teams? They get two home games.
Despite having the longest schedule in all of professional sports – a 10-month sojourn that begins in February and ends in November – Cup Series teams race at home only twice a year, both times at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway: the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and the Bank of America 400 this Sunday.
Charlotte is NASCAR’s epicenter and has been since moonshine runners in Appalachia souped up their cars to outrun the revenuers, then spent their downtime outrunning each other on local bullrings in pursuit of a trophy, bragging rights and a promised payday from the race’s promoter.
Since those rough-and-tumble postwar days of the late 1940s, NASCAR has evolved into a mainstream sport, competing on network television alongside its stick-and-ball brethren.
While those stick-and-ball teams play half their games at home, NASCAR teams get just two races at their home track during a 38-race grind that traverses 28 different venues across 21 states.
“I always look forward to Charlotte,” said Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Jacob Construction Chevrolet for Rick Ware Racing. “It’s the rare race weekend where we don’t have to pack a bag, jump on a plane, grab a rental car and spend a weekend in a hotel or motorhome. We sleep in our own beds, drive our own cars to the track and, whether we have a good day or not-so-great day, we just get back in the car and go home. The sense of normalcy is kind of nice, no matter how your race goes.”
For many racers, Charlotte is where their careers began. Ware is one such example.
“My racing career and, really, my passion for racing started at Charlotte. It was in ‘Winter Heat’ and ‘Summer Shootout’ in Legend Cars, racing in the semipro division,” said Ware about his time competing on the quarter-mile oval within the frontstretch of Charlotte’s main, 1.5-mile oval.
“To have started racing at Charlotte in one of the smallest forms of racing, both literally and figuratively, to now racing at Charlotte in the pinnacle of stock car racing, is really cool. It’s something I always think about every time I drive through the tunnel and into the infield.”
Since those years in Legend Cars, Ware has driven in a variety of racing series. He raced Late Model stock cars and began his NASCAR career in earnest in late 2013, securing a handful of starts on the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour before competing in the NASCAR Mexico Series, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series in 2014. On March 5, 2017, Ware made his Cup Series debut at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Outside of NASCAR, Ware made his mark in sports car racing. He won the 2019-20 LMP2 championship in the Asian Le Mans Series with co-driver Gustas Grinbergas. In a prelude to that title, Ware was the 2014 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Rookie of the Year. More recently, Ware piloted a Ligier JS P320 to a podium finish in the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge LMP3 class at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in January 2024. Ware has also competed in Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup and the NTT IndyCar Series.
“I’ve run three IndyCar races, tested the oval at Texas, and did ROP (Rookie Orientation Program) during the official test week in Indianapolis,” Ware said. “But the biggest thing is that I’m 6-foot-4. As much as I wanted to make it work, I learned Indy cars aren’t really suited for tall people. It’s why we focused on NASCAR.”
Sunday’s Bank of America 400 will mark Ware’s 174th career Cup Series start, but just his sixth at Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval.
“Charlotte’s a very tricky mile-and-a-half track,” Ware said. “It has a very nasty bump over in turns three and four. The track has seen a lot of wear over the years. It’s definitely a driver’s track.”
Charlotte marks the third straight Cup Series race at a 1.5-mile oval, with Kansas Speedway in Kansas City and Las Vegas Motor Speedway preceding the Bank of America 400. Each venue allows drivers to explore different racing lines to find the most efficient and, ultimately, fastest way around the track.
“You can find ways to make the car work for you even if your car isn’t exactly where you want it,” Ware said. “That opens up a lot of racing opportunities from the bottom of the racetrack all the way to the wall.”
Drivers begin exploring those opportunities Saturday with a 50-minute practice session at 1 p.m. EDT, followed by qualifying at 2:05 p.m. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. Sunday’s Bank of America 400 goes green at 3 p.m. EDT with live, flag-to-flag coverage delivered by USA Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. His racing career began at age 6 and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track, FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) and zMAX CARS Tour.
