Dale McDowell won the 2017 Scorcher at Volunteer Speedway
The Scorcher has run as a midweek event at Volunteer Speedway concurrently with the NASCAR weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway since 2004. However, that will not be the case this year as the management for the Bulls Gap, Tenn. facility has opted to pull the plug on the event that was scheduled to feature a $10,000-to-win Ultimate Super Late Model Series sanctioned race on August 16, 2018.
According to a release posted on the Volunteer Speedway website, promoter Mitch McCarter decided on the cancellation after NASCAR moved the date of the Camping World Truck Series race at the high-banked speedway located in upper east Tennessee. In years past the truck race had been run on Wednesday nights with The Scorcher on the dirt oval then taking center stage on Thursday night prior to the Xfinity Series and the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series hitting the track on Friday and Saturday nights respectively.
In an attempt to make it more of condensed weekend this year, NASCAR and Bristol Motor Speedway announced earlier this year that the CWTS race would run on Thursday night instead of its traditional Wednesday this year. As a result, McCarter and his team decided not to race on “church night” and not to miss out on the NASCAR fans that often make the short trip down I-81 to Bulls Gap for The Scorcher.
