By Matt Courson, Staff Writer
CONCORD, N.C. — NASCAR honored America’s fallen men and women during Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. After the conclusion of stage two, NASCAR brought the cars down pit road for a moment of silence.
2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano spoke about stopping the race and coming down pit road to honor the fallen.
“It was great,” Logano said. “I get not the best view of it all happening, but I think it’s great. Not just the moment of silence, but the pre-race ceremonies and having some of the military members walking out with you introducing them instead of us as drivers, and I thought that was really cool and selfless to do. Just a really cool weekend, hats off to Marcus Smith and NASCAR. It seems like a lot of people enjoyed it.”
Kevin Harvick said the move “was classy”.
It was not the first time in which such an event has happened during the middle of competition. In 2009, the event was postponed to Monday and a similar event occurred during race.
“People kept talking about that that was so impactful,” Greg Walter, executive vice president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway, told NBC Sports. “So we asked can we do that again? Our sport is so prone to supporting the military and so prone to understanding what the Memorial Day is all about.
“(We) worked with NASCAR, trying to figure out where we could do this, where (it) would be meaningful and not impact the competition greatly. The end of stage two was where we arrived.”