Budweiser Shootout 2011 NASCAR Schedule 2011. Budweiser Shootout 2011 featuring the first NASCAR race in the season tonight. Begin time for the celebration is 8 PM on. Boom. There's your answer. The 2011 Budweiser Shooutot, perhaps better known as the unofficial kickoff of NASCAR's 2011 season, got under way at 8:10 p.m. ET. Carl Edwards, Columbia, Missouri native, will start from the third position in the 2011 Bud Shootout. In other words, they've been at it for over and hour now.
Columbia native Carl Edwards and Joplin's Jamie McMurray are among the qualifiers for today's 2011 Bud Shootout, the first event of the NASCAR season. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Jeff Gordon, however, is not.) I'm not especially familiar with racing, but I have to imagine that SB Nation Kansas City is going to claim McMurray, which means Edwards is our guy for strictly regionalistic rooting purposes. Edwards was randomly assigned the third position in the race, which starts at 7 PM CST on FOX.
Kevin Harvick has won each of the last two Budweiser Shootouts; in 2009 he passed McMurray on the second-to-last lap of the night. Qualifying for the Daytona 500 will begin on Sunday, with the Gatorade Duels following next Thursday.
NASCAR Schedule NASCAR's 2011 Schedule
The real show starts on February 20 at Daytona, with the running of the historic Daytona 500. That is truly opening weekend for NASCAR, and the storied race is sure to bring all the competitive juices to the forefront among the game's top drivers.
There are some noticeable changes to the NASCAR schedule this year, however, that warrant discussion. The year's second big race takes place at the Phoenix International Raceway, but it's lost a few kilometers of distance and goes from the Subway Fresh Fit 600 to 500, and takes place on February 27.
The Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas is getting a Sprint Cup race this year as the Kansas 400 heads there on June 4. Also new to the NASCAR schedule is the Kentucky 400, a race at the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta set to take place on July 9.
You still have your stalwart raectracks such as Talladega, the track with the highest recorded speeds and home of Ricky Bobby and the shake and bake race plan for victory. Aaron's 499 takes place at Talladega on April 17, and NASCAR heads back there during the Chase for the Championship, staging the AMP Energy Juice 500 at Talladega on October 23.
The Brickyard 400 brings stock car racing to the fabled Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 31, always a big event for one of racing's biggest cities.
The final race of the year, at the very end of the hotly-contested Chase? The Ford 400, taking place at the Homestead Miami Speedway on November 20. Will that be the night Jimmie Johnson
