Race Weekend Central

NASCAR Introducing COVID-Detecting Dogs for Atlanta Weekend

NASCAR has introduced a new way of testing for COVID-19: dogs.

NASCAR will have the 360 K9 Group help to detect coronavirus for essential personnel starting this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The specially trained dogs can detect COVID-19 in a person 98% of the time, according to clinical studies cited by a NASCAR.com article announcing the tests.

If a dog alerts that a person might be positive for COVID-19, that person is tested furthermore by the American Medical Response Safety Team.

Drivers and race fans will not be screened by the dogs.

“We think that these dogs and this capability is going to allow us to rapidly confirm that all of those people entering the essential footprint on Sunday — that’s race teams, that’s NASCAR officials, that’s the vendors that work inside the garage — all those folks are COVID-free or not,” Tom Bryant, NASCAR’s managing director of racing operations, said, per NASCAR.com. “The ability to do that has kind of been the math problem that we have continuously tried to solve since March of last year.”

All three NASCAR national series head to Atlanta this weekend, with racing beginning March 20.

About the author

Jared Haas joined the Frontstretch staff in May 2020. A graduate of Cedarville University in December 2019, Jared has been a NASCAR fan since 2006. Jared has worked with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette since 2023.

Sign up for the Frontstretch Newsletter

A daily email update (Monday through Friday) providing racing news, commentary, features, and information from Frontstretch.com
We hate spam. Your email address will not be sold or shared with anyone else.

2 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bill B

Cool.
They also check for bombs and drugs. :)

Ricardo

“No Race For YOU!” says Officer RUFF.

Share via