re: 2025 NASCAR Season Thread - 2025-26 Offseason

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That doesn’t look good

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Zilisch hurt himself bad in victory lane, never seen something like that

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A giant data center proposed for Dale Earnhardt's family property has drawn fierce opposition from residents of Mooresville

Far from the roaring speedways, NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was an outdoorsman who liked to hunt and fish. There was plenty of space to do both on his sprawling land near Mooresville, North Carolina, a quiet town 30 miles north of Charlotte.

Now that land is at the center of a battle over the future of Mooresville that has galvanized residents and pitted Earnhardt’s widow, who wants to develop the property into an enormous data center, against one of Earnhardt’s children, who has joined the fight to stop her.

The proposed $30 billion Mooresville Technology Park would stretch across 400 undeveloped acres, adding several new buildings and an electrical substation. Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s widow, is seeking approval from the Mooresville Board of Commissioners to rezone his onetime sanctuary as industrial land. Tract, a Denver-based company that builds data centers and leases them to technology companies, has proposed constructing a new campus on that site.

Kerry Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s eldest son, is part of a growing group of residents urging the board to vote “no.”

“My Dad would be livid for his name to be associated” with the project, Kerry Earnhardt posted on Facebook last week, ahead of a community meeting that drew hundreds of people. “Infrastructures like this don’t belong in neighborhoods where people’s natural resources will be depleted, wildlife will be uprooted, and the landscape and lives of the people that call this area home will forever be changed.”

Teresa Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt’s third wife, who was married to him from 1982 until his death in a racing crash in 2001, did not respond to requests for comment. This is not her first dispute over Earnhardt’s legacy: A decade ago, she sued Kerry Earnhardt, her stepson, after he started an “Earnhardt Collection” home and furniture line, saying he was violating her trademark rights in their shared famous last name; ultimately, Kerry Earnhardt prevailed.

The Mooresville Board of Commissioners is scheduled to vote on the rezoning after a public hearing in September, but on Friday afternoon Mayor Chris Carney cast doubt on the project's future.

“No matter what, you can only trust if you know who your final partner is going to be, and we just don’t know that,” said the mayor, who would only cast a vote if there's a tie among the board's six members.

Tract declined to comment to NBC News. A Tract spokesperson said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer Friday that the company was "both disappointed and surprised" and that it was "carefully evaluating our next steps."

Earnhardt family disputes aside, the fight in Mooresville echoes similar debates across the country as communities grapple with the potential economic benefits and environmental downsides of giant data centers that are swallowing land and resources to feed America’s insatiable demand for computing power.

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