Texas Motor Speedway
Texas Motor Speedway Races
History of the Speedway
More than 200,000 people come to the Dallas/Fort Worth area to watch two NASCAR Cup races on this high speed racetrack where they can watch former race winners like Jeff Burton, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards. In February of 1995 Speedway Motorsports announced the decision to build the Speedway. In April Jeff Gordon and Texas natives and brothers Terry and Bobby Labonte were on hand for the ground breaking ceremonies. On August 18 1995 construction began on the speedway and one year later on July 24 1996 work began on the Lone Star Tower, a ten story building overlooking turn 2. Local companies rent office space on the first four floors. There are 76 condominiums that range from 1000 to 2000 square feet on the fifth through tenth floors.
Initially the turns had variable banking 24 degrees at the top and 8 degrees at the bottom. This proved difficult for the stock cars to transition from the banked turns to the flatter straightaways. After just two NASCAR race weekends track officials reconfigured the turns to make it a constant 24 degree banking and ease the exit off of the turns. The result was to make the track even faster. So fast that the CART open wheel racing series canceled one of its races in 2001 because Doctors were concerned about excessive G-forces on drivers. This was after Kenny Brack had qualified on the pole with a blistering lap of an 233.447 mile per hour. Texas Motor Speedway has a unique scoring tower or pole. It counts the laps down and up letting drivers and fans know how many laps have been raced and how many laps are left to race. When talking about this speedway there is no way to avoid using the most common Texas cliche ...."Everything is bigger in Texas" and that includes this speedway. Counting the permanent seats, the luxury suites, the club seats, the condominiums and the infield the capacity of the speedway is over 212,000 people. Between the grass, gravel and paved lots there is close to 660 acres of parking with 80,000 parking spaces. So getting a seat and a parking spot will not be a problem when coming to a race at Texas.
Some drivers just have a knack for the this place, Jeff Burton is one and Dale Earnhardt Jr. is another. Dale Jr. really likes this place. He won his first career Nationwide series race here in 1998 and then in 2000 Dale Jr. won his first career Cups Series race during his rookie season.
If you like high speed and top notch facilities then you should see a race at Texas Motor Speedway the fastest track on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit.
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