My name is Scott Cooper, on behalf of Speedway Motorsports, really appreciate you being here today and we'd like to welcome you back to North Wilkesboro Speedway. It's hard to believe that as we sit here and stand here today that in just seven days, we will have ***, *** late models that will be racing right here on this track. And in about 10 days, NASCAR will make its return to this historic place for the first time in nearly 27 years, first time since 1996. And on behalf of Speedway Motorsports, the company that owns North Wilkesboro Speedway, we could not be more thrilled. We would not be here today if it weren't for *** lot of effort, cooperation and everything that has gone into making this place look and feel like you see it, look and feel today from Dale Earnhardt Junior and our Ceo Marcus Smith to the local community, the state and local leaders. And of course, for what we're talking about here today, *** lot of coordination amongst *** lot of different agencies that have come together to put together the most aggressive and parking management plan that has ever been in place in 75 years of North Wilkesboro speedway history. So we need your help today because we have put together something that's going to make the lives *** lot easier and more fun for every race fan that's coming to enjoy *** good time with us next week and we hope that you'll communicate some of the tips and the things that we're going to share with you today to all the fans that are out there and even those that may not be planning to come enjoy the race that live in this area. We're going to have some important information from them. So, on our stage, we've got representatives from the State Highway Patrol, North Carolina Department of Transportation and Jessica Ficker, who's the executive director of the NASCAR All Star Race with Speedway Motorsports. We've also got some special guests that are joining us on behalf of the Wilkes County Sheriff's Department, North Wilkesboro and Wilkesboro Police departments, some other members of the state Highway Patrol. Our county commission is also represented here today and Tom Vy is the director of customer services at Charlotte Motor Speedway and he works with these agencies on *** year round basis, putting together their traffic plans and trying to make things happen that are going to be positive for our fans when they're coming to our event. So that all said, let me introduce our guests on the stage first to my far left from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. First Sergeant, Chris Knox. Chris, thank you for being here today. And to his right, the division engineer from the North Carolina Department of Transportation, Michael Poe Michael, appreciate you being here and again, Jessica Ficker, our executive director of the NASCAR All Star Race. So Jessica, I'm going to let you kick us off. Thank you, Scott. And again, it's unbelievable that in 10 days we are going to have NASCAR racing back at this historic facility at North Wilkesboro Speedway. And again, thank you to the state officials, local law enforcement, all of the law enforcement agencies that have helped us to put this robust plan. It would not be possible without your support and dedication. And today, we have some critical important information that we'd like to share with the public and our guests that are attending next week's events. We are asking that our guests prepare and follow these five key, five key tips to ensure *** successful and adventure and *** great adventure. Next week when they get here, our first one is to purchase parking in advance. We still have parking that is available on our website at North Wilkesboro speedway dot com. You can purchase parking passes that are on site or we still have some off site locations available that you can take our shuttle system to and from the track. Download ways. Every parking pass will have *** specific address and ways will be able to provide you the most efficient route to that. And when you get your parking pass, you'll have *** QR code on the back that you can download. It only works with ways. So we really encourage that car pool and arrive early. We know *** lot of our guests live right here in town and your roads are going to be busier than usual. So please plan to come early and enjoy the festivities that we have planned. Tailgate. We have definitely *** lot planned when you get here. As far as our fan zone goes. We've got displays, family friendly activities, food and beverage and not to mention all the concerts from Dirk Spendley Chase Rice and Midland to fill your days, be patient and be kind. This event is going to be awesome, but we need to do it together. Please remember to be patient and kind to fellow motorists, our local law enforcement agencies, the parking attendants and to each other. It has been *** great honor to be able to lead this effort and without our partners, it would not be possible. And I would like to bring up Michael Poe to help give us *** little bit more information on how to make this *** successful event. Thank you, Michael. Thank you Jessica. So many months ago, I think it was back before Christmas, we started coordinating with the folks here at the speedway as well as the state highway patrol and the other local law enforcement. Agencies to begin the process of crafting preferred traffic routes for this historic event. As Jessica mentioned, we really want to continue to encourage guests to arrive early and carpool if possible. Doing both of those things can help in reducing traffic congestion and making parking more affordable per person. Also, if you're traveling to and from the North Carolina Mountings and not attending the race events, we really want to encourage you to avoid utilizing us 421 as we do expect some congestion out there with the race events and it will certainly make things easier for everyone involved. But that's for the entire race week, May 16th to the 21st and talking about the traffic, we want to highlight some of the key routes. Uh But as Jessica mentioned, all the specific details we found in the press release on the website North North Wilkesboro speedway dot com. If you're traveling east on I 40 from the west, we encourage you to take exit 13 to Morganton, then highway 64 north to Lenore from there, take Wilkesboro Boulevard to N C 16 before heading east on us. 4 21. If you're approaching from I 77 from the north, I would encourage you to take exit 65 to N C 91 at Union Grove and then continue to N C 91 north to N C 1 15. North, continue on N C 115 north to us. 4 21 east and then follow the speedway parking directions. As you approach again, all these specific details and more can be found in the press release and on the website at North Express speedway dot com. As Jessica mentioned, we also encourage everyone to download ways, ways is going to have the best information and planned and recommended routes as you navigate during race week. And patrons will also be able to utilize their parking addresses found on the back of their parking passes, as you mentioned. Uh Speaking of passes, we want to make sure those parking any time throughout race week park in their designated lots. This will ensure everyone will be able to get in and out efficiently and that your vehicle will not get towed. No parking and this is important, no parking will be enforced along us 421 in the vicinity of the speedway and along speedway road as well as Fishing Creek Road. We also want everyone to be aware that the speed limit on us 421 will be reduced from 65 miles an hour to 55 miles an hour during the events in each direction. We certainly don't want our friends over here law enforcement having to address any of those situations. But in all seriousness, you know, we did that for safety and we hope everyone follows the rules that we put in place in addition to ways motors can also check out drive N C dot gov for real time traffic updates as well. And one of the things specifically that we did to help out in preparation for race week was wide wide, the shoulder with additional pavement just across the street here from the speedway, uh so that fans can uh exit directly off 4 21 to lot. Number five, we anticipate that will help out in relieving congestion on 4 21 significantly. We also have installed numerous portable message signs and have overhead message signs out to alert motorists problem areas and suggest alternate routes around incidents and congestion. And just last but not least, I want to thank the folks here at speedway as well as the highway patrol and our law enforcement partners for their help in planning this. I know they're going to have *** lot of hard working folks out here that weekend helping as well as N C helping to control the traffic. Please be courteous to all those folks that are out there working, you know, rain or shine so that we can execute these plans and help ensure everyone gets to their destination safely. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Chris Knox as stated, I'm *** first sergeant with the highway patrol. We're just as excited as everyone to be here. Months of planning have gone into this. Our troop f commander, Captain Byers and his crew and first sergeant Alri, who's the local supervisor here have spent many hours preparing for this. But as an agency, that's what we do, we prepare for events, whether it's an event where we have hours to plan for or days to plan for like *** natural disaster or *** hurricane, you will see how we patrol at its finest an event like this that has spanned for multiple months. It's given us *** lot of time. It has given us looking back at history and this event was here as stated many years ago and we pulled from those plans and maybe made some technological improvements to those we have, taking the resources that are currently at hand to address to the upcoming event and being able to adapt based on the highway patrol's impact here. Years ago, we're really excited for this. There's *** lot of great resources talking about the technology that just weren't around years ago as far as using the ways app being able to access drive and see to look at the traffic conditions that are in place. You know, just having those help facilitate what we have going on is *** big benefit to us. Equally important to ensure that people that are coming and leaving the race track are those that live and work and are trying their very best to get around the race traffic. This weekend, we're going to be equally working to help both our members throughout this event for the weeks time that they'll be here are really ambassadors for our state. And the hope is that they can help people get in and out, but again, equally help people that are trying to get around safely. And our hopes are that everyone enjoys the event. We hope that safety is the forefront and we hope that planning is *** big part of what they do before they come to this. We've done our part, we've done the planning, we've done the plans, we've set out the traffic post. But what we need now is the public to do their planning if they pass by this speedway, like I have many times and reminisced of years ago and they think they know what they're getting into because they know where the speedway is. That's not, that's not going to help them. They really need to put the time and effort into planning for this, researching, going on the North Wilkesboro speedway website and utilizing that ways app. We appreciate it. Thanks for having us *** part of this and we look forward to the week to come. Thank you. Thank you very much Chris. Um as all of our guests talked about, you know, we've got *** great plan in place and uh we really need your help to communicate that plan today and share it with all of your listeners and viewers and your readers and so that we can try to do everything we can to spread the message that we need people to um you know, follow those top five things that Jessica talked about, you know, purchase your parking pass today in *** speedway managed lot. The plan is all based around the lots that obviously that we control. So if people can go ahead and they can buy their parking today, that's going to help us looking ahead to next week. In addition to that, Jessica mentioned one of our remote parking lots. We've got *** remote shuttle lot with coach buses that's going to bring people from the old Lowe's headquarters in Wilkesboro and bring them on coach buses right here to the speedway. You can park in that lot on *** three day NASCAR weekend pass for $60 if you carpool and you've got four people in the car, that's only $5 *** day for somebody to be able to have *** place to park and the transportation back and forth to the track. Um You know, we talked about car pooling. It is so important. The average race fan travels to *** NASCAR race with one other person in the car. Just think if we had four people per car, we've automatically cut our traffic in half. Chris, you'd probably like that wouldn't you? That could work. So purchase the parking pass today, encourage car pooling for all of our fans that are coming. Download the ways app. This plan has been put in place with specific directions through ways so that the fans will be able to get here to their specific parking lot and each parking pass is going to look something like this. The pass has not only got the directions, it's also got the address for that specific parking lot on it, so they can literally plug that address right into ways and it's going to help get them here in the most efficient manner, plan to arrive early and enjoy all the cool things that are going to be taking place here. We're going to have so many NASCAR legends and driver appearances on our stages. We've got concerts just coming out to see the facility again for the first time in decades, for some people is going to be special. So plan to arrive early and lastly, of course, be patient and kind with your fellow motorist, the people that are working so hard to make this *** great experience for the race fans and of course for each other because this is going to be *** great week next week for Wilkes County, for the state of North Carolina and for nascar's return with the NASCAR All Star Race on May 21st. So it's going to be good. Now, our special guests are going to stick around for some one on ones. We're going to have them spread out here in this area. They're also going to be close to this map. Take *** close look at this map, we've put up what our inbound parking is going to look like for the speedway area, *** general map in the middle of the speedway area itself. And then *** map on the other side of what the outbound traffic flow is going to look like. Our other special guests can add some additional insight if you have another question. And, um, you know, we really want you to dig in and get as much as you can. Um, we've got press releases that if you haven't already gotten them, Becky's gonna hand hand those out to you. We've got some hard copies. We've sent out digital copies as well with digital versions of these maps and in addition, when nothing else works, send everybody to North Wilkesboro speedway dot com and all of this traffic and parking information can be found there as well. So again, um, on behalf of Speedway Motorsports, we're so glad to have you here, Michael. I will tell you, I drove up from Charlotte this morning. I already saw one of your messaging boards telling me to be on the lookout for next week. So I think we're gonna be doing some things to try to communicate and get people ready and, uh, we want to get them ready for *** good time. So I'm gonna put our media guests to the test first. We talked *** lot about using *** particular address. Well, tomorrow night, we're having our first public open house from 5 to 9 PM here at North Wilkesboro Speedway. It is free. We'll have tickets to all events for sale, souvenirs concessions. We'll have driver appearances, autographs. We'll even have an opportunity to benefit speedway children's charities to get your picture taken right here in victory lane with the pace car for the race. So lots of great activities and the parking lot we're going to utilize is 33 37 Fishing Creek Road. It's right on the back side of the track here. So again, if everybody can use 33 37 Fishing Creek Road for tomorrow night, we'll get the cars and the public and the media to be able to come in to the right place. Ok, so once again, thank you so much for joining us. Our special guest will be right over here. There's some water in that cooler and please see us if we can help you with anything else. Thank you, wanna come over this way.