Coronavirus forces layoffs at Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Speedway Motorsports, which owns Las Vegas Motor Speedway and seven other NASCAR tracks, announced Wednesday it has laid off approximately 200 employees and furloughed about 100 others as part of a reorganization because of the COVID-19 virus.

“The extraordinary circumstances presented by this pandemic and the subsequent shutdown of the economy have had a significant impact on our business,” a company statement said. “Since the beginning of the shutdown four weeks ago, we have kept our entire team on full pay while our properties remained dormant. In that time, it has become clear that we must be a more nimble, more efficient organization.

“As such, we have made the difficult decision to restructure our business and eliminate many duplicate positions. These decisions were not easy. Our company is providing a severance package to each person affected by job eliminations.”

LVMS president Chris Powell referred to the statement and said he would have no further comment.

The NASCAR Cup Series is tentatively set to resume with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a Speedway Motorsports track, on May 24.

The Indianapolis 500 and Formula One’s Monaco Grand Prix, also scheduled for Memorial Day weekend, have been postponed, with the Indy 500 rescheduled for August.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.