INDIANAPOLIS — Gentlemen Start Your Engines. The NASCAR world was aiming for a quick restart to their 2020 season, like as soon as a few weeks now. Within the last week, several governors have said that they are working on putting plans in place in easing restrictions and allowing their citizens inside of their states to start getting back to normal.

Now, NASCAR despite an extended stay-at-home order from the state of North Carolina getting extended from April 29 to May 8, have been given the green light from governor Roy Cooper to return to their race shops and begin preparing their cars for an imminent return.

NASCAR started their season as usual back in February at the Daytona International Speedway and raced the next three weeks after — all on the west coast (Las Vegas, Fontana and Phoenix). But, as the teams were setting up shop in Mid-March at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, the COVID-19 virus came on strong here in the United States and shut the great country down. That affected the sporting world, including NASCAR.

The last six weeks have seen no sports. Recently though, several governors in the states North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Texas have expressed interest in hosting NASCAR races again very soon. The target was May 24 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway for the Coca-Cola 600, but with more tracks being in the works again to host races, NASCAR and their local legislature were eyeing a potential return to racing the weekend prior.

But, in order for NASCAR to get back to racing, they need to first get back to work in their shops. See, all month North Carolina has been under a stay-at-home order which was supposed originally supposed to end next week. No one has done anything in terms of racing related activity over the last month. This has affected the NASCAR community as they didn’t fall under the “essential” businesses category to keep working on their cars even for a future return. That meant that all race teams that are located in the state, which is a majority of them anyways, well they couldn’t work anymore.

So, in order to make a May return to action, the teams first have to be able to get into the race shops to start working again right? Well, North Carolina’s governor ended up clarifying on Thursday that while the order is extended, NASCAR moves to the “essential” category. That means teams can get back to their shops and prepare their cars and teams for a quick return to racing which means all steps are now in place for a May return.

Cooper said in his availability on Thursday that “from the information that I have now already under our state executive order, they could begin working in their garages as an essential business defined under our executive order.”

While that sounds great, Cooper did say that if shops are in counties that are restricting travel and issuing further stay-at-home orders, that they’d have to adhere to them. Still, like it or not, NASCAR is now essential and it appears we’re going to be racing again, albeit without fans, very soon.

Georgia is reopening on Friday. Florida and Texas have singled out NASCAR as a sport that can return in their states without fans too.

Cooper, said last Thursday that he too would like to hold events without fans in his state just last week. But, he also cautioned that he didn’t want to do so too soon. This week’s statement shows he wasn’t bluffing.

The governor of Texas said this on Monday –

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, said that he’s in favor fan-free sporting events being held inside of his state and even singled out NASCAR as a possibility too.

“Like if NASCAR does a race and can televise it without having large crowds, I think that’s a good thing,” DeSantis said in a recent interview. “I think people have been starved for content. We haven’t had a lot of new content since the middle of March.”

Also on Thursday, sources are confirming that Darlington Raceway is making it known that they expect to host a second race in 2020 too. There’s been rumors that Darlington may be the track that hosts the first race back due to their distance between the Charlotte area and the race track. You can get to the 1.33-mile South Carolina race track in about two hours from Charlotte.

The NASCAR teams are saying that in order to make this work, they need to return to tracks near their shops. Darlington, fits that bill. So does the Atlanta Motor Speedway. To me, the first three races should be Darlington, Charlotte and Atlanta. Then, Texas would make sense for the first weekend of June to help IndyCar and the track overall out. What’s good about that is all four tracks are intermediate race tracks. Same for Homestead-Miami Speedway who could run the fifth event which means that the cars that were already prepared for Atlanta and Homestead could be used at the first five races in the return.

So, with all these tracks in these states being available and teams now getting back to work, NASCAR will be back sooner rather than later.