DUNDEE, N.Y. — One of the first pieces of the 2027 NASCAR schedule took shape Thursday, with Watkins Glen International announcing that its race weekend will move to September next year.
Watkins Glen track president Dawn Burlew first announced the news at an event welcoming campers to the road course’s grounds for this weekend’s NASCAR tripleheader.
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Though an exact date wasn’t specified, officials indicated that the NASCAR Cup Series race will take place in one of the earliest slots in the 10-race Chase next year. It’s a shift back to a more traditional date on the NASCAR schedule for the 2.45-mile circuit, which plays host to a rare springtime event this weekend.
Since debuting on the NASCAR circuit in 1957, the road-course race in New York has primarily occurred in August, late in the regular season. Before this year’s May date arrived, the lone exception was a mid-September show in the 2024 postseason, when Chris Buescher passed Shane van Gisbergen to win a thriller on the final lap.
The move will also add road-course racing back to the postseason mix. Charlotte Motor Speedway created a one-year hiatus this year by moving its fall race from the Roval configuration back to the 1.5-mile oval. For Burlew, sewing up a spot in the Chase rotation next season marks a welcome return.
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“People actually really liked that recognition for The Glen as well as all our fans that come here,” Burlew said Thursday from a lakeside vista at Glenora Wine Cellars, where she participated in a fan event and tour with van Gisbergen, the defending Watkins Glen winner. “So being in [The Chase] going forward, I think they’re going to be thrilled that we’re at the first part of that and really kind of set the stage for the rest of the playoff season. So again, if we can be part of that and kick it off, there’s no better place than to do it at The Glen.”
Sunday’s Go Bowling at The Glen (3 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) marks the earliest date Watkins Glen has appeared on the Cup schedule. It leads into a highlighted stretch of the schedule this month that includes the new-look All-Star Race at Dover, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and a trip to Nashville Superspeedway.
Burlew — who became track president before the 2024 season — acknowledged challenges with this year’s springtime date, with brisk weather in this weekend’s forecast for the state’s Finger Lakes region. The area has had a variable mix ranging from seasonable warmth to late-season chill in recent weeks, but she says the spring bloom is well underway at one of racing’s most picturesque venues.
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The annual NASCAR weekend is among the facility’s biggest, and Burlew says its placement at the early end of the track’s schedule hasn’t given the Watkins Glen staff much time to ease into its event calendar. Burlew says everyone involved has pivoted.
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“I think what we’ve done is our merchandise, we’ve looked at it when we saw the date, and we said, OK, we need to shift our merchandise from all T-shirts and tank tops to long sleeves and things like that,” Burlew said. “But then again, we did some really cool stuff for Mother’s Day with our merchandise, so we just took a whole different twist to it when we started getting ready and planning for this weekend. We’re more celebrating just a different date, because it gave us a whole different way to plan. Instead of just doing traditional flowers, we did more mulch and tulips that my team planted last fall, which normally we wouldn’t do, but we said, OK, that’s something different. So we just embraced it that way.”
Contributing: Cameron Richardson
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