Drivers respond to social unrest in Charlotte – Nascar

LOUDON, N.H. — NASCAR returns to the business of postseason Chases in all three of its top series this weekend. Two of those tours have landed in New England, greeted by crisp weather and the changing of the seasons.

But thoughts continue to focus on the news of this week’s social unrest nearly 900 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina — stock-car racing’s hub and one of the sanctioning body’s primary headquarters. Protests have gripped Charlotte’s Uptown area in the wake of the fatal police-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott on Tuesday.

Relatively few drivers claim North Carolina as their home state, but the proximity to home bases for both drivers and teams makes the connection to Charlotte a part of their fabric.

It’s what has made this week’s turmoil difficult.

“Obviously, we’re trying to do things here today, but, yeah, there’s an emotional reaction,” Joey Logano — a Middletown, Connecticut native — said Friday from New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “A lot of times when you see things like this happen, it’s in a different city and you don’t recognize where it’s at, but when you see the NASCAR building getting vandalized and you see areas of the city that you know very well with just crazy things happening it makes you sick to your gut. You don’t know what to do, and you kind of feel helpless.

“All we can do really is just say some prayers and hope that eventually everything calms down and everyone is able to come to some kind of peace at the end of this thing, and we can move on and move forward and make our world better.”

Logano also said he understands the role professional athletes play when it comes to social issues.

“I think any athlete or public figure takes on a responsibility,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that you can influence in good ways or bad ways, and I feel like you should know that. There are a lot of athletes and public figures that don’t realize that about the reaction they can make across the country or the world in a lot of cases by just a couple of words. … I personally believe when I sit down here I know the influence that I can have on young eyes watching us that are very fragile at the time that they could go a lot of different ways.  You want to be a positive member of society.”

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency late Wednesday night as the protests took violent turns. Windows were broken at the NASCAR Hall of Fame and adjacent NASCAR Plaza offices, and several other businesses were vandalized in the city’s central business district, escalating Charlotte to the lead in national news broadcasts.

“You can’t really ignore it,” said Austin Dillon, who — like his Richard Childress Racing team — calls Welcome, North Carolina home. “It’s on all the news stations, but for me it’s sad that our country is at this point in time. I just hope everybody can look at everything and gather their thoughts and figure out the right way to fix the problems we have. Hopefully, with the way things are the right people will come together and fix these problems that are going on. It’s just sad, really.”

Said Matt Kenseth, a Cambridge, Wisconsin, native: “You just hope it stops. I don’t know enough about what actually happened to start it all. Obviously, I think that we’re very, very, very fortunate to live in a free country and peaceful protest and demonstrations are OK. I mean certainly the violence and the vandalism and the theft and stuff isn’t — isn’t really a way to I think prove a point or try to make things better. It’s definitely not making things better in that sense, so hopefully we’ll get it all figured out and go from there.”