By David Rogers. NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Joey Logano’s first victory of the 2026 season helped make history in Western North Carolina on July 19. He and his crew dominated the latter half of the Window World 450 hosted at North Wilkesboro Speedway, the first NASCAR Cup Series points race since Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon last won at NWS in 1996.
There was a lot of energy and emotion at the speedway this weekend, given that it had been 30 years since Speedway Motorsports moved the points race from NWS to Texas. Over those three decades, the track went through a couple of tries to keep racing or stage events, but for many of those years it was allowed to deteriorate, with grass and small weeds growing in the infield and track cracks and weeds growing into bushes and trees out in the grandstands. Buildings saw broken down walls and glass.
But the Western NC and Wilkes County racing communities never gave up. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. reportedly had an important role in the track’s resurgence when he suggested to owner Marcus Smith, Jr. that the historic track be included in the iRacing simulation portfolio. It had to be cleaned up for the simulation to be created, then once Smith saw that it was one of the most popular tracks on the iRacing platform, it didn’t take much convincing for Speedway Motorsports to take the next step: prepare it to host a couple of NASCAR All-Star races beginning in 2023.
Past NWS Stories by Blowing Rock News
Stories galore at North Wilkesboro Speedway for All-Star Race (and before)
With backing from Earnhardt, Jr., Smith and multitudes of racing fans — especially those in the Wilkes County community who kept fighting for NASCAR to return — 2026 saw the return of the Cup Series points race.
At the race’s end, Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe were the only drivers with a reasonable chance of challenging Logano for the lead. Ty Gibbs and Ryan Blaney had fast cars but at different points in the race suffered speeding penalties on pit row. Earlier in the race Chase Elliott and William Byron, both driving their Chevrolets for Hendricks Motor Sports, got “caught” on pit row when a caution came out. It was a moment filled with irony because the caution was caused by teammate Alex Bowman’s unwise decision to cut across three lanes of traffic in an effort to get to the pit row entrance. The timing of the mishap (Bowman cut into the 45 of Tyler Reddick) caused Byron, Elliott, and a host of other contending drivers to go a lap down, deficits from which they could not recover.
Logano led a career-high 323 laps to secure his first win of 2026, snapping a 45-race winless streak. The No. 54 of Ty Gibbs claimed Stage 1 and Logano began his dominance while winning Stage 2 of the three-stage competition. In total, the race was 450 laps around the 0.625 oval which gains approximately 20 feet in elevation from Turn 2 to Turn 3 and loses approximately 20 feet from Turn 4 to Turn 1.
Hamlin was second, followed by Briscoe (No. 3), Gibbs (No. 4), Shane Van Ginsbergen (No. 5), Bubba Wallace (No. 6, the last on the lead lap), Brad Keselowski (No. 7), Todd Gilliland (No. 8), Daniel Suarez (No. 9) and Ryan Preece completing the top 10.
The fans packing the grandstands got their money’s worth of racing excitement. There were 17 lead changes among nine drivers on the night. There were five caution flags for a total of 43 laps under yellow.
The short 0.625-mile lap length created a massive strategic risk for teams trying to short-pit under green. Making a routine, 4-tire pit stop under green-flag conditions takes long enough that drivers would immediately follow two or more laps down to the leaders. This forced most teams to play it safe and stay out until a yellow caution flag opened pit road as a poorly timed caution would almost certainly set them back for the entire race. That’s exactly what happened on Lap 183, not even halfway through the race, when the Bowman-Reddick collision occurred near the entrance to pit road. The resulting caution flag caught several drivers mid-sequence, trapping a significant portion of the field to go a lap down and filtering the luckier contenders to the front.
Despite the immense difficulty of passing on the short track, Briscoe impressively navigated his way through traffic to improve 27 spots over his No. 30 starting position. Wallace gain 20 poistions after starting No. 26 and Keselowski advanced 16 spots by race’s end.
Next weekend, NASCAR goes to the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with the headline Cup Series event on July 26, the Brickyard 400.
