Traffic delays start of Nashville's 1st Cup race in 37 years

Traffic issues on the streets leading to Nashville Superspeedway have delayed the start of the city's first NASCAR Cup series race in 37 years.

The Ally 400 was due to start Sunday afternoon at the track in Lebanon, about 20 miles east of downtown Nashville, but the main grandstand still had plenty of empty seats when the television broadcast began. The race was a sellout with 38,000 tickets sold.

Noah Gragson, a driver in the Xfinity series, tweeted that he had “been in traffic for 2 hours. Brutal.”

Nashville Superspeedway opened in 2001 and hosted 21 Xfinity Series races and 13 Truck Series events before it closed in 2011 when it couldn’t get a coveted Cup date. Dover Motorsports owns the track and moved one of its weekends from its Delaware facility to Nashville to reopen the speedway and at last host a Cup race.

NASCAR awarded the track a four-year sanctioning agreement.

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