Nascar races on all sorts of tracks, from short to long, oval to road course, concrete to asphalt. Here’s a bi-weekly look at all the tracks of Nascar’s National Touring Series.
TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
1.44 mile asphalt quad-oval
Opened 1996
Lights? Yes
Series: Cup, Xfinity, Trucks
Nicknames: The Great American Speedway, Texas International Raceway, Where CART Failed (again)
THREE FUN FACTS:
1. Texas Motor Speedway was forced to purchase the rights to the name from a small short track, similar to when a random law firm owned the rights to MLB.com for a few years.
2. Texas’s first race was a disaster due to “weepers”—cracks in the track surface that allowed water to seep through. Not to be confused with “weepers” like Bobby Hamilton Jr. and Ted Musgrave.
3. CART was forced to cancel a race in 2001 due to excessive G-forces, something that could’ve been easily avoided with a simple test session. Remember this when people say “I can’t believe that CART lost the war”.
www.spaderacing.com updated four times weekly
Visit the store https://www.cafepress.com/spaderacing
Buy the book 100 Stock Car Racing What Ifs Unauthorized
A MOXOC Media production