Eldora Prelude "On Hiatus," Stewart Comments On Truck Rumors

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart announced yesterday that his “Prelude to The Dream” charity race will not take place in 2013. Today, the Eldora Speedway owner spoke about the reasons behind that decision, and whether the event will return in subsequent years.

“The Prelude is on hiatus,” said Stewart today at Kansas Speedway. “It takes a ton of work to put the Prelude on. We are changing our format for how we run the Dream (dirt Late Model race), making it a three-day weekend with that series. We are trying to focus on that a little bit more, (making) some changes that we think are going to be better for our Late Model race.

“We just needed to take a year off while we focus on that, and make sure we don’t get overloaded.

Stewart said the event will return, possibly as soon as 2014. 

“We have intentions of bringing it back,” he said. “We are just changing the format with the Dream this year, so we want to make sure that we have enough resources to focus on that. It made it a little bit harder to try to put the Prelude on the same weekend, so we needed to take a year off to focus on The Dream.”  

Stewart also commented on rumors of a possible NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race on the Eldora dirt in 2013. 

“Trust me, I would be ecstatic if we could get any NASCAR race at Eldora,” he said. “That would be great. I have talked to NASCAR (and) they have been looking at all kinds of different tracks. It has been brought up in conversation, but that is about as far as it has come right now.”