On Track With Nashville Superspeedway
Well, the muse struck today after all. I spent most
of the day at Nashville Speedway, but I got a chance to go out and visit the new
superspeedway that’s being built about 25 miles east of Nashville, and that was
inspiring, to say the least. But before I get any further, in the interest of
full disclosure, let me say that Dover Downs, who’s building the new speedway,
is a client of mine. I’m the webmaster for Nashville
Speedway USA and Dover
Downs web sites. And obviously what I say here is my own opinion and not
necessarily anyone else’s. But with that out the way…
We left Nashville Speedway and drove the 30 minutes or so
east to get to the new track. At highway 840, you exit the interstate and
go south for a few miles. Eventually, there will be a direct exit from 840
to access the track, but for now you have to take a two-lane road (which is
being generous; it’s more like a lane and a half) to get there.
When we got there, since we were connected with Dover
Downs Entertainment, we had complete access to the whole place. It’s huge.
About a month ago they finished installing the concrete tunnel under turn 4. The
pictures I saw then showed the top of the tunnel still uncovered. They’ve
done a LOT of work since then. The tunnel is covered and the banking is graded.
In fact, the track is now fully "complete" with all the banking in
place.
Speaking of the tunnel, it’s nearly the length of a
football field, and, if I remember right, can accommodate two lanes of the big
haulers the teams use these days.
Most of the tracks that NASCAR has added to the Winston
Cup circuit over the last few years have been "cookie-cutter" tracks.
California is based on Michigan, Texas and Atlanta are based on Charlotte,
etc. Not the new Nashville Superspeedway. While it will be the same length
as Darlington (1.3 miles), the banking in the turns will be 14 degrees, and it
will be a D-shaped oval. Oh yeah, the surface will be concrete. So there really
isn’t another track like it anywhere.
I said above that we had full access to the site, and that
turned out to be more than we anticipated. We not only got to park outside
the track and take pictures, but we actually took the car around the track for a
lap! For "only" 14 degrees, those turns sure seem steep. And the
banking on the back stretch is supposed to be 6 or 9 degrees (my memory fails me
right now), and that seems pretty steep as well when you’re on it.
The facility will be a complete race complex. The initial
phase will have the 1.3 mile track with 50,000 seats (which will be expanded to
150,000 if NASCAR awards the track with a Cup date). Plans are to have a 5/8’s
mile asphalt track with a 1/4 mile track inside (similar to the Fairgrounds
track), a drag strip, an oval dirt track, and a road course. Grading is
being done on the drag strip, the asphalt track, and the dirt track in
preparation for completion of those tracks within the next couple of years.
It looks like most of the hurdles that a very few Wilson
County residents put up (have you seen my parody
of their web site?) have been cleared. Compared to the new Nashville Arena and
football stadium, the public will be spending almost nothing on this facility.
Of course the state and county have to put in roads to get there, and utilities
have to be in place, but unlike those other two facilities, the city/state isn’t
building it (my property taxes here in Nashville doubled the year after
construction on the new stadium began).
The new speedway is scheduled to open in the Spring of
2001, and Saturday’s Busch Grand National race will be the last one at the
fairgrounds. While I’m excited that the Nashville area will have a new track,
I’m saddened by the ultimate demise of the historic fairgrounds track. Larry
Woody has called the .596 mile Nashville Speedway USA "NASCAR
University" and I think he’s right. I can’t think of any other track that
has produced more drivers who compete in NASCAR’s various divisions than
Nashville Speedway. At least we’ll have two or three more years of weekly
racing at the fairgrounds, but when the lease is up, the weekly racing will move
to the 5/8 mile track at the new Superspeedway complex. The fate of the
fairgrounds track will be up in the air, and no one seems to know or have a clue
what’s going to happen to it.
But things change, and the fairgrounds facility just
doesn’t cut it for major races anymore. So I understand the need to move
everything to the new state-of-the-art track, but I still hate to see them move.
I’ll be posting updates on the track on a special page
we’ll be setting up on the Nashville Speedway USA web site. I hope to have more
pictures of the construction as it progresses, and soon we’ll have an artist’s
rendering of what the new facility will look like.
All in all, I think this facility will be good for Middle
Tennessee, and if they do the impossible and manage to get NASCAR to give us a
Winston Cup date, people are going to be amazed at the economic impact this
place will have on the area.