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Six-shooters will return to Texas Motor Speedway Victory Lane celebration

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during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 9, 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Chris Graythen

After a one-race absence, the traditional six-shooters will again be part of Texas Motor Speedway’s Victory Lane celebrations this season, track president and general manager Eddie Gossage has announced.

The guns were absent from the last Cup race at the 1.5-mile track on Nov. 5 when Kevin Harvick won.

Gossage nixed the guns in the immediate aftermath of a church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, that same day which killed 26 people.

“I just thought ‘this isn’t the thing to do today,’ ” Gossage told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram during a Goodyear tire test at the track. “It was too close to us. If it had happened in, fill in the blank, whatever state miles and miles and miles away, I wouldn’t have thought like that. But it happened in our own backyard, more or less, in San Antonio.

“The six-shooters are not any kind of political statement or anything like that. They’re just a silly stereotypical Texas cowboy celebration. That’s all they are. A lot of different colleges and universities shoot guns or cannons or things like that at the kickoff or when they score a touchdown. And that’s all that is.”

The six-shooters have been given out since the spring 2005 Cup race. TMS also awards a Henry repeating rifle to pole-winners.

NASCAR holds its first Texas race weekend April 6-8, culminating in the Cup Series’ O’Reilly Auto Parts 500.

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