Cody U. 
The National Corvette Museum (NCM) Motorsports Park is hosting one of its biggest events of the year, despite still recovering from the tornadoes that ripped through Bowling Green. The storm inflicted severe damage to both the NCM Motorsports Park, and GM’s Bowling Green Assembly plant where the C8 Corvette is exclusively built. Over the weekend, the facility – storm scars and all – hosted the National Auto Sport Association (NASA – the other NASA) for its annual Bourbon Barrel event hosted by the organization’s Great Lakes region.
The NASA Bourbon Barrel event was one of the biggest events for the NCM Motorsports park since the tornadoes touched down late last year. The damage consumed multiple Corvettes and damaged the assembly plant. Debris from the museum itself was found launched 30-plus miles away. As a result of the tornado damage many events have had to be canceled up to this point.
The event, as described by Executive Director of NCM Motorsports Park, Greg Waldron, in a local news station interview, brings together multiple regions and a variety of cars who race against the clock and each other on one of five different circuit configurations.
The Great Lakes NASA Bourbon Barrel event consisted of a high performance driver’s education (HPDE) session, an autocross, time attacks, a test and tune, and multiple fields of racing. There were hundreds of entrants participating in the event through the weekend.
The National Corvette Museum itself is open and continues to run a normal schedule. Meanwhile, Bowling Green Assembly plant tours are on hold, but that may have to do with the upcoming 2023 Corvette Z06 which is supposed to start production in early May. The NCM, which opened in 1994 remains the largest car museum in the world dedicated to a single model. The assembly plant has been churning out Corvettes since 1981. Previously, the Corvette was built in St. Louis, Missouri.
