If you’re going to build anything
in Texas, you’d better think big. And if what you’re building is a race
track, grand is the only scale that will do.
Texas Motor Speedway is The Great American Speedway, a place where the
speeds are as grand as the stage the racing here plays out on.
Located just north of downtown Fort Worth in the Dallas-Fort Worth
Metroplex, one of America’s most vibrant metropolitan areas, Texas Motor
Speedway is a state-of-the-art facility that plays host to stock-car and
open-wheel racing as well as other major events throughout the year.
Construction began in 1995 at Texas Motor Speedway, with the original
configuration calling for a dual-banking system that had 24 degrees of
banking for stock cars and 8 degrees for open-wheel cars.
On April 5, 1997, Mark Martin won the Busch Series race on the opening
weekend of competition at Texas Motor Speedway. The next day, Jeff
Burton won the inaugural Cup Series race, the Interstate Batteries 500
in front of a sellout crowd.
Later that year, Billy Boat went to Victory Lane at the end of the True
Value 500, the inaugural Indy Racing League event at Texas Motor
Speedway. But Arie Luyendyk disagreed with the decision that Boat had
won the race, and came to the victory celebration to challenge it. The
legendary A.J. Foyt, Boat’s car owner, didn’t like Luyendyk’s timing and
the two got into a scuffle. Nearly two weeks later, Luyendyk was
officially declared the winner.
In 1998, Turn 4 at Texas Motor Speedway was reshaped to ease the
transition from the 24-degree banking in the turn to the 5-degree front
straightaway. That April, Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s road to NASCAR stardom
took a giant leap forward when he got his first victory in the NASCAR
Busch Series.
But after that race, a second renovation of the track began and was
completed in less than two months. The project eliminated the dual
banking and finally gave the track the configuration that would lead to
the great racing seen at Texas Motor Speedway in the years since. The
track record, set in 2002, by Bill Elliott is 194.224 mph, makes Texas
one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR.
Fans by the thousands have been buying tickets to Texas Motor Speedway’s
races for nearly a decade now, and the fun is just beginning.
Beginning in 2005, Texas Motor Speedway joins the list of tracks hosting
a pair of Nextel Cup races each year.
The spring race, which will mark its 10th anniversary in 2006, has been
won by a different driver each year – Burton, Martin, Terry Labonte,
Earnhardt Jr., Dale Jarrett, Matt Kenseth, Ryan Newman, Elliott Sadler
and Greg Biffle.
The second race slides into the a prominent spot on the Nextel Cup
schedule, two week before the season’s final race. That puts Texas Motor
Speedway, and the fans who will be there for its race each fall, right
in the middle of the Chase for the Nextel Cup Championship.
