- NASCAR is moving the Watkins Glen race to a date near its previous schedule.
- The May experiment schedule by the sanctioning body failed miserably.
- It’s an odd time to have a race at the track, given the weather conditions.
NASCAR is heading toward its second road course event of the season, but the sanctioning body’s decision to place the race at Watkins Glen International in the middle of May has turned into a headache for fans and campers alike.
After one season of battling rain, mud, flooded campsites, and travel issues, NASCAR is now steering the event back toward safer ground by shifting the race to September beginning in 2027. It looks like motorsports officials insist on learning lessons the hard way, preferably while thousands of campers sink into mud up to the axle.
The sanctioning body is abandoning its May experiment for Watkins Glen, with the road course set to rejoin the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Championship in 2027.
The Watkins Glen schedule shuffle left fans stuck in the mud
For the first time in decades, the race traditionally held in August was moved to the May 8-10 slot, but according to posts circulating across social media, the fallout from the calendar switch started the moment campers rolled through the gates.
It was supposed to be another race weekend at The Glen, but it instead turned into a fight against weather and terrain, with campgrounds taking hit after hit throughout the weekend. Fans arrived at the ground expecting the usual setup that has accompanied Watkins Glen race weekends for decades, only to find themselves both metaphorically and literally buried in mud, as many argued from the outset that staging a May event in upstate New York was asking for trouble.
Heavy rain and cold temperatures transformed sections of the property into swamps, creating problems across multiple camping grounds. Photos and videos posted online showed fans struggling to free vehicles enmeshed in mud, while others could not even access assigned campsites because entire sections had flooded and been shut down.
“The mud and rain situation…”
Photographs from across the property showed lines of vehicles spinning tires while traffic crawled through soaked ground. In several cases, tractors had to be brought in to tow campers and cars from areas where the terrain gave way beneath them. Fans described the grounds as packed with mud, with even routine movement around the property turning into a chore long before engines fired on track.
The timing of the event also triggered complaints beyond the weather itself. Families travelling to the race said the May placement created conflicts with school schedules, forcing some children to miss classes in order to attend the weekend.
For longtime attendees accustomed to the August tradition, and even for some fans who had never attended a race at the track before, last autumn’s announcement of the schedule change was a big change to live with, and the mud and rain situation only worsened it.
Glen Race heads back into the Chase
This season was the first time there were no road courses in the ten-race Chase after the removal of the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval from the postseason schedule. Beyond the racing implications, the May date also brought complications due to the region, where snowmelt and spring rain routinely leave campground conditions unstable during that time of year.
The move to early May had originally been part of NASCAR’s effort to spread road course events across different parts of the calendar, but the return to September in 2027 will still accomplish that goal without throwing fans into weather conditions that turned race week into a slog.
Landmark venue
No official date has yet been announced for Watkins Glen’s 2027 return to September, but confirmation of the move means the race will land in the first half of the Chase. Watkins Glen previously held a Chase date in 2024, when the event took place on September 15 as the 28th race of the season.
The Glen remains one of the landmark venues on NASCAR’s schedule, but early May also changes the appearance and atmosphere around the circuit, with many trees still bare as spring growth begins across the Finger Lakes region.
Many local residents keep campers in storage until Memorial Day weekend, and the Gorge Trail at Watkins Glen State Park is not even open yet because this stretch of the calendar remains one of the slowest tourism periods of the year in the area. Several local short tracks, including Oswego Speedway, do not even begin their racing seasons until the end of the month, indicating just how out of step the May experiment proved to be.
