Cabarrus County's motorsports legacy is almost as old as the combustion engine. It is, after all, birthplace of one of racing’s most fearsome competitors, Dale Earnhardt. It is also home to one of NASCAR’s most renowned tracks, the Charlotte Motor Speedway, a 1.5-mile high-speed oval in Concord, where drivers top out at speeds better than 200 mph.

Nicknamed "The Beast of the Southeast," the speedway is considered home base for NASCAR, with 90 percent of NASCAR teams having racing shops within 50 miles. In addition to the speedway, Cabarrus County hosts a major drag-racing complex, a rolling-road wind tunnel that aids motorsports research, the MRN Radio network and some 200 businesses that support motorsports enterprise and employ approximately 20,000 people. Household names in NASCAR, such as Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, Stewart-Hass Racing and Roush Fenway Racing, are based Cabarrus County, as is Hendrick Motorsports, which houses the racing teams of four of the top drivers in NASCAR. Those drivers are Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson, the current four-time defending champion of the sport.

“We have a total of 500 employees who work for the four race teams, and probably 450 of them live in Cabarrus County,” says Scott Lampe, vice president and chief financial officer at Hendrick Motorsports. “Just at Hendrick Motorsports alone, we have a $40 million annual payroll. So you can just imagine how much money NASCAR generates overall in Cabarrus County.”

That impact is felt at places such as Concord Regional Airport, which is used by so many race teams that it has garnered the unofficial nickname "Home of the NASCAR Air Force."

“Hendrick Motorsports has a total of five corporate jets and a helicopter based at Concord Regional, and we buy more gasoline from the airport than any of their other customers,” Lampe says.

And the county has become a draw for motorsports investment outside NASCAR.

Windshear Inc. is a 180-mph rolling-road wind tunnel that opened in September 2008, adjacent to Concord Regional Airport to provide testing services for race teams, including those in the Formula One and IndyCar circuits. A staff of 12 operates the facility 10 hours a day, five days a week, and is available for hire to all motorsports teams and auto manufacturers. The enclosed wind tunnel provides constant airspeeds up to 180 mph, at any temperature that a client wishes, in a highly secure and private working environment. Windshear has tested a number of cars affiliated with NASCAR, Formula One and two auto manufacturers. One auto manufacturer that has already seen positive results from a visit to Windshear is General Motors, which booked the facility in 2009 to test its new GT2 Corvette race car. Three weeks later, the Corvette won the Grand Prix of Mosport race in Canada, which GM crediting Windshear as being a key contributor toward that victory.

“You always have to consider ways to diversify your product, and we believe we are just scratching the surface,” says Jeff Bordner, Windshear site manager. “We are open to new ideas because we want to get as much utilization of our facility as possible.”