Race Shop Touring (Concord, NC)

I am planning to attend the upcoming IndyCar race in Richmond, VA. When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky went to a few Indianapolis 500's and am looking very forward to this race. I live currently both here in Richmond, and have a home in Concord, NC. There I took a motorcycle ride on Monday June 22 to visit the museums and shops of some of the local race teams. One that I saw was Earnhardt-Ganassi near the Concord Regional Airport. The airport has been the focus of many of the local races teams (in fact all three here are near it). This is a view of the race shop where the cars are built for Earnhardt-Ganassi.


The crashed car seen here (a video of the crash is seen on the monitor next to it) was seen at Roush Racing. As with the other shops, many race cars are available for viewing, along with many other race items. The shops also have items available for purchase (shirts, hats, etc). Though a few shops in the area do charge admission, these three at least are free to wander through and offer an interesting look at the cars. All are in very modern buildings; the era of backyard race shops is long gone in NASCAR. In fact all of these are in huge buildings, if not multi-building complexes.


The largest of the museums in the Concord area, is Hendrick Motorsports. This is Dale Earnhardt, Jr's car one of the many on display. The shops are in a large multi-building area, and the museum has a number of cars on display from many drivers, and including some past drivers. As with the other shops you can see the teams working from viewing areas, and get a real feel for how the cars are built. I posted a few more photos from all the shops on my Flickr Page if you would like to look at a few more photos. There are also a number of race teams located in nearby Mooresville, NC and of course the Richard Childress operation is located in Welcome, NC with a great collection of Dale Earnhardt, Sr. cars (that is one of the shops I previously mentioned that charges admission). With three great tracks clustered together (Lowe's Motor Speedway, The Dirt Track, and the Z-Max Dragway) the area offers a lot of big time racing action, as well as some fine local racetracks. If you like racing, its a fun place to be.
However...so does Richmond and as I noted will be making the next post on the upcoming IndyCar race. It will be fun to get back to that, and to see that race live.