For the fifth year, Texas Motor Speedway, NASCAR and the IndyCar Series are teaming up to encourage students to get excited about reading.
On Tuesday morning, more than 6,000 students from seven North Texas school districts were at TMS to kick off the Speeding to Read challenge.
The students will compete against their classmates, other schools and themselves to read as many books as possible, beat personal reading goals and win prizes as individual readers and teams.
To kick off this year's challenge, NASCAR Camping World Truck rookie John Hunter Nemechek was on hand to give the students a pep talk, lead them in games and tell them about how education is still a big part of his life as an 18-year-old budding race car driver.
The Speeding to Read program first started in 2011 with just one school in the Northwest ISD and Texas Motor Speedway.
Now, along with NISD, schools from the Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton, Lewisville, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw and Crowley districts are taking part, 11 total this year.
The program was named "Best Youth Marketing Initiative" in the NASCAR industry last year.
