NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It has become a fixture on the Nashville sports calendar — the Music City Grand Prix. But race officials announced Wednesday morning that the Music City Grand Prix won't be taking place in Music City this year. Instead, the fourth installment will be at the Nashville Superspeedway in Wilson County.
"We’re very proud of those first three years," said Scott Borchetta, the founder of Big Machine record label who has now taken over race responsibilities.
Things were always going to be different in 2024. With the Titans breaking ground on a new stadium later this month, the race was prepared to move across the Cumberland River and take over Broadway and streets around downtown. However, Borchetta says when they started taking a closer look, that plan just wasn't viable.
"We flat don’t have all the lots we need to house all the teams, we don’t have room for team hospitality," he said during a news conference on Zoom.
Borchetta says the organization deserves some of the blame.
"Not having those conversations way in advance. They should have happened a year ago, and they didn’t," he said.
But he also placed some of the blame at the feet of new Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell.
"The prior mayor, Mayor [John] Cooper, he had a different way of doing things. Some of the things he just pushed through," said Borchetta.
A source close to the matter tells NewsChannel 5 that race officials requested millions of dollars in infrastructure changes to curbs and medians along the race route. They evidently wanted the city to pay for it all. That's where conversations broke down.
"It just got to a point where the new mayor and his team, who have been incredibly communicative, they came back to me with some specific things that we requested," said Borchetta. "We all just looked at each other and we said, you know we’re trying to put 10 gallons in a five gallon bucket for this year."
So now, the race environment will go from trendy to far more traditional, over at the Nashville Superspeedway. The race will be held inside the grand stands, so no street racing this year.
Reaction on social media has been pretty mixed. For those who will miss the novelty of it being downtown, this will be a disappointment. But for those who love racing, there's really no better venue in the area.
Borchetta wants to eventually move the race back to downtown, but doesn't envision that being possible until the Titans wrap up construction on the new Nissan Stadium.
"I don’t see that we can properly race downtown until that stadium is completed, and as of right now, they’re scheduled to return in Fall of 2027," he said.
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