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All of NASCAR’s top three divisions will get the weekend off for the Easter holiday, but NASCAR is no stranger to racing on the Easter weekend. 

The last Cup race ran on Easter Sunday was at Richmond International Raceway on March 26, 1989. The original date in February was a wash due to snow and rescheduled for that date. Rusty Wallace went on to win that day, leading 88 laps.

Richard Petty failed to qualify for the 1989 Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond and NASCAR made a change after the weekend. The sanctioning body decided a past champion would have a provisional for every race, also known as the “Petty Rule.”

Although the Cup Series rarely saw action on Easter weekend, the NASCAR Busch/Nationwide Series raced that weekend for several years. From 1989 to 1998, the Busch Series ran at the .363 mile Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina on the holiday weekend. The last time a Busch race was held on Easter Sunday was in 1994 at Hickory, won by Ricky Craven.

The Series shifted to Nashville Speedway on Easter weekend in 1999 and 2000, before gravitating to a new track called Nashville Superspeedway in 2001.

From 2001 to 2011, the Busch/Nationwide Series ran there on Saturday of Easter weekend. Either the ARCA or Camping World Truck Series would join NASCAR’s second-tier series.

Since 2012, NASCAR hasn’t raced on Easter weekend, since removing Nashville from the Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series schedules. Carl Edwards won the last NASCAR race held on Easter weekend, which was a Nationwide Series race at Nashville on April 23, 2011.