Concord, N.C. ? Lowe’s Motor Speedway pulled off a double sweep this week, winning rights to host The Winston and getting NASCAR to make its fall race a Saturday night event.

The UAW-GM Quality 500 will be run Oct. 11, 2003, under the lights at the suburban Charlotte track, a track spokesman said Friday. The race has always been run on Sunday afternoons.

Lowe’s already runs The Winston, NASCAR’s annual All-Star event, and the Coca-Cola 600 at night, and sells out both events. The track used to sell out its October race, but has run into attendance problems the past few years while competing with the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.

“Night racing is very popular with fans and they seem to do well at tracks like Bristol and Richmond,” said track spokesman Jerry Gappens. “We’d been asking to try a night race for several years, but (track president) Humpy Wheeler had trouble making it work because we couldn’t find a television partner.”

NBC will broadcast the race.

NASCAR is not expected to announce its 2003 schedule until next week, and missing from it will be the date and location of The Winston.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., sponsor of the race and NASCAR’s Winston Cup series, has called a news conference for next Wednesday to address that event. But The Associated Press has learned the All-Star race will be run at Lowe’s for a 16th-consecutive year next season.

NASCAR has been trying to move The Winston to other venues to make it more like All-Star events in other major sports. It’s been held at Lowe’s every year but one since its inception in 1985.

Lowe’s was the first superspeedway to permanently install lights, doing so in 1992 to add pizzazz to The Winston. The next year, the track moved back the start of the Coca-Cola 600 so its other May race could finish under the lights.

Now all the track’s events will be run at night, including the October Busch series race, which will be run Friday, Oct. 10, 2003, Gappens said.

“I really think this is exciting for everyone,” Gappens said. “It’s going to help us with attendance, it’s going to be great for the fans, it’s going to give the teams an extra day off. It’s going to be a really good deal.”