NASCAR Grand National East Series
former NASCAR series
The NASCAR Grand National East Series was a short-lived racing series created by NASCAR in 1972 to provide a second series, below the Winston Cup Series, at tracks that had been removed from the former Grand National Series' schedule upon Winston's assumption of the series sponsorship in 1971. The series only lasted for two seasons.
History
The Grand National East Series was created in 1972 by NASCAR as a reaction to the contraction of the Grand National Division (renamed the Winston Cup Series) schedule and in response to the desires of new series sponsor Winston. The previous 50-to-60-race schedules were considered too large, and therefore the schedule was trimmed to approximately thirty races. This left many tracks that had previously hosted NASCAR's premier series without their headliner events; however, NASCAR created the Grand National East Division to fill the gap.
A similar Grand National West, then Winston West Series, was also formed from the former Pacific Coast Late Model Division and would continue to the present as the ARCA Menards Series West. However, the first version of a Grand National East Series would only last two seasons before being abandoned by NASCAR.
Eventually, NASCAR developed the NASCAR North Tour by the 1980s before abandoning it for the Busch Grand National North Series in 1987, which in 2003 became the Busch East Series when the rules for the West and North (renamed East as the tour began traveling to the Southeast) series were unified. Today, the series is known as the ARCA Menards Series East.
Competition
The Grand National East Series used a mixture of former Grand National/Winston Cup cars, as well as cars from NASCAR's Grand American series, which had also folded after its 1971 season. The cars raced in the series were allowed to be up to four years old.
The public source identifies “NASCAR Grand National East Series” as former NASCAR series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around NASCAR, Grand and National.
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This entry incorporates text from “NASCAR Grand National East Series” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.