How to Buy Tickets to a NASCAR Race

There’s nothing like hearing the roar of the engines as they whisk by you, smelling the rubber of the tires and watching cars race past you at 100 miles per hour. But getting tickets, especially to the most popular NASCAR races, can be tricky and expensive.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Set your price. Figure out ahead of time what you can afford to spend. Budget enough for travel and hotel if you don’t live near the track.
2. Contact the track. This is the easiest and often the cheapest way to get tickets. Call the track well in advance, as some have special drawings you must enter to get some tickets, such as Bristol Motor Speedway’s drawing for the Food City 500. Alternatively, you can buy tickets on the track’s website. NASCAR.com has a list of the tracks with links to buy tickets (see Resources).
3. Buy a package. Many travel agents have special deals for NASCAR races that include hotel rooms and tickets to one or several events. Some packages also include airfare and shuttles to and from the race. This is a hassle-free way to plan your trip.
4. Visit the track website if you were too late to buy the tickets you wanted. Several tracks, including Bristol and Atlanta (see Resources), have a sanctioned ticket exchange where ticket holders can sell extra tickets.
5. Look at the selection offered at various online ticket resale sites, such as Stubhub.com. You might find great seats available on these sites, but keep in mind they will come at a premium. Stubhub also offers a protection policy for the customer that promises a refund if the tickets are fake or if the event is canceled.
6. Show up at the track if you decided to take a last-minute trip or you couldn’t get affordable tickets. You might be surprised by the number of people scalping tickets outside the race who are just trying to get some money back. You might pay above face value, but if you are patient and can haggle, you might get a decent deal. It helps to have a seating chart with you so you know where the seats will be.

Tips & Warnings

• Unlike many sporting events, NASCAR races are more difficult to see from the bottom rows, so they are often the cheapest. Getting seats higher up will allow you to see more of the track, and keep you out of some of the race fumes.
• Make sure you know whether it is legal for you to buy scalped NASCAR tickets and where. Each state or even community might have its own regulations.
• Beware of scalped tickets unless you are confident that they are not counterfeit.