Denny Hamlin threw out an idea after Dover that got NASCAR fans talking: Put the All-Star Race back on a real short track. Not an intermediate oval. Not a temporary experiment. A place with history, tight corners, and enough room for drivers to push aggressively. For Hamlin, the answer was obvious: Fairgrounds Speedway, Nashville. Then Bob Pockrass stepped in and reminded everyone that wanting something and actually getting it done are two very different things.

“Regarding Denny Hamlin proposed all-star at Nashville Fairgrounds … the Speedway Motorsports renovation proposal (which includes SAFER Barrier) is approx 18-month project,” Pockrass posted on X. “Still needs approval from metro council and needs to go through three meetings. So 2027 seems unlikely.”

Hamlin began pushing the Fairgrounds Speedway Nashville idea right after the 2026 All-Star Race at Dover, even though he had just won the exhibition race and collected the $1 million prize. His issue was not with the result. It was with what the All-Star Race has become.

“If I’m Steve O’Donnell, CEO of NASCAR right now, I’m contacting SMI and saying, all right, let’s do whatever we’ve got to do to run this in Nashville Fairgrounds on Saturday night next year,” Hamlin said on Actions Detrimental. “It needs to be at night. I think it needs to be on a Saturday night, and it needs to be on a shorter track.”

That was the heart of Hamlin’s argument. Dover may be a great race track, but he did not believe it should have lost a points race just to host the All-Star event. The 2026 race also started at noon CT because Dover does not have lights, which only made the exhibition feel further removed from the Saturday-night identity the All-Star Race carried for most of its history.

Hamlin made that clear after the race, too. “It stinks, right?” he told reporters. “I definitely prefer Dover as a points race. There’s no other track like this on our schedule. It’s so unique, and it requires such a unique style of driving… You can’t lose tracks like this in our points schedule. I’m a fan of this place.”

And the Fairgrounds is old-school NASCAR. It is a 0.596-mile short track sitting right in the middle of Nashville. Drivers love it because you actually have to fight the car there. Fans love it because the racing usually turns messy in the best way possible. That is exactly the kind of bumping, traffic, restarts, and under-the-lights atmosphere Hamlin seems to want from an All-Star event. But right now, the track is nowhere close to Cup-ready.

Speedway Motorsports has a renovation proposal sitting in limbo worth somewhere between $60 million and $100 million. The track still needs SAFER Barriers, catch-fence upgrades, resurfacing, updated grandstands, ADA compliance upgrades, sound walls, and a pedestrian tunnel. Those upgrades are not cosmetic. They are the difference between a historic local short track and a facility that can realistically handle Next Gen Cup cars, a national broadcast, modern fan flow, security, garage needs, and a Cup-level crowd.

Even if the city approved everything tomorrow morning, construction alone would take around 18 months. And Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell has been cautious about pushing the deal forward, especially with neighborhood groups fighting it hard. Residents around the Fairgrounds have complained for years about noise, traffic, parking, and environmental concerns.

There is also pressure from powerful local figures tied to nearby development projects around GEODIS Park. So this stopped being “just a racetrack renovation” a long time ago. Opponents have also pushed broader questions about land use, housing, parks, and whether auto racing still belongs at the Fairgrounds site at all. That political fight makes the timeline even harder to predict.

That is why most people in the industry think 2028 is the earliest realistic target. Some even believe 2029 makes more sense. Meanwhile, NASCAR still needs somewhere to put the All-Star Race in 2027.

Charlotte Motor Speedway suddenly looks like the safest bet again because it already knows how to host the event. North Wilkesboro also stays in the conversation because its revival actually worked. Bowman Gray Stadium is another possibility if NASCAR moves the Clash somewhere else. Dover, meanwhile, feels more like a one-off after the criticism around the format, timing, and the decision to remove a points race from the track.

That criticism was not just about the venue. The race format itself came under fire. The event was split into 75-lap, 75-lap, and 200-lap segments, with several drivers already locked into the final portion still racing through the early stages. By the time the final segment arrived, multiple contenders had already been caught in incidents. That made the structure feel unnecessarily risky for an exhibition race built around a $1 million finish.

The bigger story here, though, is how many historic racetracks have run into this exact problem.

NASCAR has already watched tracks disappear because history stopped paying the bills

Fans hear Nashville Fairgrounds and think about history. The problem is that history alone usually does not save racetracks anymore. North Wilkesboro is the perfect example. NASCAR left after 1996 because the place was outdated and the sport wanted bigger markets. For years, the track sat abandoned and covered in weeds. It only came back because public nostalgia got loud enough and state money finally showed up.

The Fairgrounds already lost Cup racing once, too. NASCAR stopped racing there after 1984 when ownership issues and financial chaos took over. By the time everything settled down, the Cup dates were gone. Some tracks never recovered at all.

Auto Club Speedway in California got swallowed by real estate value. NASCAR sold most of the land, the two-mile oval got demolished, and warehouses replaced it. The proposed short-track rebuild still has not happened.

Then you have places like Sonoma and Laguna Seca, where tracks survive under constant neighborhood pressure. Noise complaints, lawsuits, curfews, traffic battles, it never really stops. That is why old-school tracks either get corporate backing or they slowly go out of consideration.

Bristol and Martinsville survived because major companies poured money into upgrades and safety projects. Without that support, they could have easily gone the way of North Wilkesboro.

That is what makes Hamlin’s push interesting. He is speaking for a huge part of the fanbase that wants NASCAR to feel more grounded again. Fans miss short tracks that feel loud, cramped, and chaotic. They want races where tempers matter as much as aero balance. Hamlin understands that.