All roads lead to Charlotte.
Like Canton, Coopers Town, or Springfield, it's where sport took its first steps.
Daytona is NASCAR's Mecca.
Charlotte is its major.
Founded at the intersection of trade and triumph,
the city was named for England's Queen Charlotte.
But the birthplace of NASCAR became a cradle of revolution.
And the Queen's City became known as the Hornets Nest.
North Carolina was the first state to revolt,
and the last state to secede from the Union.
The role of NASCAR is a city marked by independence boulevard.
Charlotte is where lightning struck,
where the car's life magazine called Thunderbolts with Fenders
ran the first race on a farm out on Wilkinson Boulevard.
Baseball's field of dreams was an Iowa cornfield.
NASCAR's was a field of Carolina cotton.
Among the competitors that day was a part-time bootlegger full-time
bakery truck driver named Lee Petty.
Lee is one of the all-time greats.
His son is the greatest of all time.
Richard Petty became known as the King,
even in a Queen's City who kicked out the crown.
From Petty Blue to Carolina Blue,
Richard called Tobacco Road home,
a historic stretch of highway famous for basketball powerhouses,
and a Greensboro lunch counter where the sit-ins of 1960
drove the civil rights movement.
Junior Johnson took the back roads to Charlotte.
Tom Wolf's last American hero ran moonshine in Wilkes County
before trading in a checkered past for the checkered flag.
For Dale Earnhardt,
the only way out of the Carolina cotton mill town of Cannapolis
was a red clay dirt track.
In time, the Intimidator would match Petty's mark of seven cups.
On the road to Charlotte,
a cotton town kid can become the man,
and a man can become King.
It's where the hometown panthers sport Petty Blue and Intimidator Black,
and train wreck hits punctuate both the gridiron and starting grid.
North Carolina is where the Wright Brothers first took flight,
and Michael Jordan first took to the air.
And in a town where driving the lane meets the intersection
of Victory Lane and the road to the playoffs,
hoop dreams and racing dreams are one and the same.
The road to Charlotte is traveled by steel-eyed men
saddled to iron horses, driving at twice the speed
as one of Carolinian catfish hunters Hall of Fame fastballs.
And like the great American pastime,
America's motorsport isn't about hitting and running in circles.
Every lap, like every base, is another link in the chain,
rounding toward the plate.
An odyssey marked by momentous winds and immutable loss.
The history of racing has also been marked by moments sobering to the soul.
Lest we forget, the path to victory is guided by our better angels.
Charlotte is NASCAR's hometown.
Whether trade and triumph or tobacco road,
Independence Boulevard, Wilkinson Boulevard,
or the Boulevard of Broken Dreams,
the road to Daytona, the road to the Cup,
or the road to redemption,
all roads lead to Charlotte.
All roads lead home.
