Action Packed Festival Thrills Fans
Circle K Speed Street is a three-day festival held annually in Charlotte, NC, for the past 26 years. In any normal year, the event is held over Memorial Day weekend to celebrate the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race. However, due to COVID-19, the event took a hiatus in 2020 and returned in 2021 over the October 7-9 weekend, to celebrate the Bank of America Roval 400 NASCAR race. The FREE event included:
- Yoga every day at noon
- An outdoor biergarten, courtesy of Gilde, one of Charlotte’s newest breweries
- Food trucks
- Music and games
- Product giveaways and sampling
- NASCAR celebrity appearances
On Thursday, Oct. 7, the event hosted a panel discussion as an extension of the DE&I virtual program that was organised and presented by CSM last spring. In that conversation, the current state of DE&I in sports was discussed by NASCAR President Steve Phelps; Charlotte Hornets President, Fred Whitfield; PBA CEO, Colie Edison; as well as IOC Board Member and 2x Olympic Gold Medalist, Sebastian Coe.
We continued the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion in motorsports with Bubba Wallace appearing in a further talk at the festival, fresh off the back of his YellaWood 500 win at Talladega Superspeedway the preceding Monday.
Alongside Wallace were several executives and NASCAR industry stakeholders including:
- Brandon Thompson, Vice President of Diversity, NASCAR
- Erik Moses, President, Nashville Superspeedway
- Kreig Robinson, Director, Partner Management, 23XI Racing
- Max Siegel, CEO, Rev Racing
- Rev Racing drivers Nick Sanchez, Isabella Robusto and Rajah Carruth joined the panel as well. Sanchez went on the win his first ARCA race just two weeks later.
The night was hosted by Will Lowery of NBC Sports and former contestant on The Big Break.
Leading up to the discussion, Ray Singleton, a singer, songwriter, musician, rapper and producer from Charleston, opened up the event. The Hamiltones, a trio of North Carolina natives who started as background vocalists for Grammy-winning soul singer Anthony Hamilton closed the event.
On Friday, Oct. 8: 90s alt-rock favorites Tonic and Better than Ezra opened for the legendary Collective Soul. The fiery band of Georgia-bred rockers recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with a high energy set.
Saturday, Oct. 9: Charlotte native and rising Country artist Christina Taylor opened for Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Cassadee Pope and Kernersville native, multi-platinum artist Chris Lane, whose music has generated more than 1.2 billion on-demand streams.
250,000
Square Feet
3
Days
13
Bands
14
Hours of Music
14,000
Goody's Headache Powers distributed
9
Pallets of Coke Zero sampled
Since 1997, the Production team has managed, produced, and promoted this event on behalf of the non-profit the 600 Festival Association. Not only do we sell the partnerships, but we also foster the city and county relationships, design the site and manage all of the logistics, PR, marketing, advertising, social and all facets of the event from A to Z.
