Charlotte Motor Speedway was designed and built by racing promoter Bruton Smith and Hall of Fame driver Curtis Turner. After initially pursuing the project separately, Smith and Turner partnered and sold shares to fund construction. The project broke ground in 1959 and was completed in less than eleven months. The facility opened on 19 June 1960 with the inaugural World 600 — now known as the Coca-Cola 600. Construction cost approximately $1.25 million.
The facility immediately ran into financial difficulty, and ownership changed hands multiple times in the 1960s. A period of stability followed under Richard Howard's ownership from the mid-1960s into the mid-1970s. In 1976, Bruton Smith and his new partner, longtime track general manager Humpy Wheeler, completed a takeover of Charlotte Motor Speedway. Since then, the Smith family and their company Speedway Motorsports, LLC, have directed the facility's growth and expansion.
The track's fundamental one-and-a-half-mile quad-oval layout has not been reconfigured since opening in 1960. The circuit features 24 degrees of banking in the turns and five degrees on both the frontstretch and backstretch. Grandstand capacity is approximately 95,000.
Permanent lighting was installed in 1992, making Charlotte the largest lit superspeedway in America until Daytona International Speedway received lights in 1998. From 1999 to 2009 the track was named Lowe's Motor Speedway under a naming rights deal — the first major NASCAR track to carry a corporate sponsor's name. The name reverted to Charlotte Motor Speedway when Lowe's declined to renew at the end of 2009.
In 2018 a road course configuration was introduced, combining a portion of the infield with the oval to form a "roval" of approximately 2.28 miles and 17 turns. The inaugural roval race's infield chicane caused considerable difficulty; for 2019 it was widened from 32 feet to 54 feet with additional runoff. Ryan Blaney won the first roval race in 2018.
The broader facility complex spans around 2,000 acres and also includes a 0.200-mile clay short track, a 0.400-mile dirt track, and ZMax Dragway — a 0.250-mile drag strip.
Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts two annual NASCAR Cup Series weekends. The primary event is the Coca-Cola 600, introduced at the track's 1960 opening as the World 600 and regarded as one of the longest, most demanding, and highest-profile races on the calendar. The second event uses the roval configuration. The facility also annually hosted the NASCAR All-Star Race — originally called The Winston — from 1987 through 2020.
The track has additionally hosted NASCAR Xfinity Series and Truck Series events, as well as IMSA sports car events over its history.
The qualifying lap record is held by Kurt Busch, who posted a 27.167-second lap in 2014 at an average speed of 198.78 mph. Jimmie Johnson holds the record for the most wins at Charlotte Motor Speedway with eight victories, including four Coca-Cola 600 wins. Johnson also won four All-Star Races at the circuit.
Nine drivers recorded their first career NASCAR Cup Series win at Charlotte. Among them: Jeff Gordon in the 1994 Coca-Cola 600 (win number one in what became a Hall of Fame career), Bobby Labonte in 1995, Matt Kenseth in 2000, Jamie McMurray in 2002 (in only his second career start, filling in for the injured Sterling Marlin), Casey Mears in 2007, David Reutimann in a rain-shortened 2009 edition, and Austin Dillon in 2017 — the first victory for the number 3 since Dale Earnhardt won there in 2000.
The 2005 Coca-Cola 600 holds the NASCAR record for most cautions in a single race at 22.
The 1987 All-Star Race produced one of stock car racing's most replayed sequences when Dale Earnhardt appeared to go off the edge of the infield during a battle with Bill Elliott, then recovered the car without losing the lead — a moment known as the "Pass in the Grass." During the 2000 All-Star Race, an 80-foot section of a pedestrian bridge collapsed onto a highway in Concord; 107 fans were injured with no fatalities. In the 2011 Coca-Cola 600, Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran out of fuel on the final lap while leading, allowing Kevin Harvick to win the race.
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