Source: Rockingham, Darlington to lose races; Texas, Phoenix gain

Friday, May 14th 2004, 5:51 am

By: News On 6

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) _ Tracks in two southern states will lose Nextel Cup races next year and venues in Texas and Arizona will get them under a results-driven realignment, a NASCAR source told The Associated Press.

The schedule changes were to be disclosed Friday at Richmond International Raceway by NASCAR chairman Brian France. He was to announce that North Carolina Speedway will no longer appear on the Nextel Cup schedule, NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said Thursday night.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Darlington Raceway will appear only once and that Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway would each pick up one of the moved races. Darlington will stage a Saturday night race on Mother's Day weekend in a break from tradition.

The weekends of Easter and Mother's Day have been open dates in the Cup schedule, but that will change starting next season.

The tracks in Texas and Arizona, and International Speedway Corp., which owns the Phoenix facility, also scheduled news conferences for Friday. None of them stated a reason for the conferences.

The changes mean North Carolina Speedway will have lost both of its Nextel Cup weekends in the span of a year. The struggling track's other date was given to California Speedway at the start of this season.

Darlington, the original NASCAR superspeedway in South Carolina and host through this year of the prestigious Southern 500, would be left with only one race for the first time since it began staging two in 1960.

The Labor Day date moved this year to California from Darlington, which had its second race pushed back to Nov. 14.

Under the realigned schedule, the source said Texas will gain a race in November _ during the 10-race dash for the points championship instituted this year. Phoenix would add a race in the spring.

Rockingham, a NASCAR track since 1965, and Darlington, in the series since 1950, routinely fail to sell out their races. Texas attracts more than 200,000 fans and Phoenix nearly 80,000.

It is not immediately clear how the changes affect a 2-year-old lawsuit filed by a Texas Motor Speedway shareholder who sued NASCAR over its refusal to award a second event to the track in Forth Worth.

Francis Ferko, a shareholder in Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns and operates Texas, filed suit after SMI's board of directors refused to sue NASCAR. The suit claims NASCAR breached ``implied'' and ``express'' contracts by not awarding a second Cup race to Texas.

SMI chairman Bruton Smith and Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage have contended since the $250 million track opened in 1997 that they have not been given a second date by NASCAR as promised.

NASCAR has maintained it never promised Texas another race.