NASCAR Tracks: Kansas Speedway

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Kansas Speedway is one of the newest tracks on the Sprint Cup schedule, opening in May 2001 in Kansas City, Kansas.  It's one of several 1.5-mile, D-shaped "cookie cutter" tri-ovals.  You've seen the same design in various sizes at Las Vegas, California, Michigan, Atlanta, Texas, and other tracks.

Kansas Speedway is considered a sister track to Chicagoland Speedway, which was built around the same time and is also owned by the France family's International Speedway Corporation.  Kansas is very similar to Chicagoland except that Kansas is a little flatter with 15° of banking in the turns, 10.4° in the front stretch and 5° on the back straightaway. Chicagoland is also one continuous turn with a noticeable bend in the back stretch whereas Kansas has a straight 2207-feet back stretch.

Kansas Speedway was pretty boring when it first opened.  Drivers could only run in one groove, making passing almost impossible.  That has changed as the racing surface has aged.  Now it's a multi-groove track and it's a bit easier to pass there.

There have only been ten Sprint Cup races held at Kansas.  Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle are the only drivers to have won twice.  Gordon won in 2001 and 2002.  Stewart won in 2006 and 2009.  Biffle won in 2007 and 2010.  Matt Kenseth holds the track qualifying record, 29.858 secs. (180.856 mph) set in 2005.

There were plans to build a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino overlooking Turn Two.  Kansas Speedway was also planning to add a road course.  Those plans have been put on hold since the bottom dropped out of the economy.

Kansas Speedway hosts one race from each NASCAR national series per year.  The Sprint Cup race, the Price Chopper 400 presented by Kraft Foods, takes place in October.  It is the third race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.  The Nationwide Series runs at Kansas on the same weekend.  The Camping World Truck Series races have been held at various times ranging from April to June.

In 2010, NASCAR made several changes to their Sprint Cup schedule that take effect in 2011.  Atlanta and Fontana each lost one of their two races.  Kentucky Speedway was awarded a race.  Kansas Speedway will add a second race to be held in June.

NASCAR tracks index page
Sprint Cup race winners

NASCAR: Dover Preview

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NASCAR has three races in two days on this weekend's schedule.  Two races and all the attention are at the Monster Mile, Dover International Speedway.  It's Week Two of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, the AAA 400, Sunday at 1 p.m. (ABC).

They call it the Monster Mile for a reason.  DIS is exactly one mile long with high banking (24° in the turns and 9° on the 1076-feet straightaways), which leads to higher speeds.  The cars get good grip on the concrete surface, which leads drivers to push the issue, but the surface is bumpy, which can lead to trouble, especially with the new double-file restarts.  The confines are tight -- a single-car spin can quickly turn into a multi-car accident that can cause problems with twelve drivers racing for a championship.

In Friday qualifying, Jimmie Johnson captured the pole with a lap of 22.878 seconds (157.356 mph). It was his second pole of the season.  Juan Montoya will be beside Johnson on the front row after a lap of 156.699 mph. Chase drivers took six of the first seven starting spots. Ryan Newman and Greg Biffle start on Row Two. Kasey Kahne and Jeff Gordon start in sixth and seventh respectively. Carl Edwards has the best average finish among active drivers at Dover, but he has his work cut out for him Sunday. He qualified 30th, worst among the Chasers.  (Race lineup)

Mark Martin comes into Dover with a 35-point lead over Johnson and Denny Hamlin.  Nine drivers are separated by less than 100 points.  Jeff Gordon is in tenth, 102 points back.  Kasey Kahne trails the Chase field, he's 161 points behind Martin after just one Chase race.

NASCAR: Loudon Preview

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NASCAR travels to New Hampshire for a two-race weekend.  The big race is Sunday's Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  It's the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship, twelve drivers vying for the championship separated by just forty points.

I'm not a big fan of the Chase.  I like the old system where a driver had to be consistent over the entire season to win the championship.  Now, a driver just has to be consistent enough over the regular season, the first 26 races, to be in the Top 12 and make the Chase.  The Chase is a playoff format; the points of the 12 Chase drivers are reset and they begin the playoffs on an almost equal footing.  The winner of the Sprint Cup champion is the best of the 12 over the final ten races of the season.  Big leads are almost always erased.  Last season, Jimmie Johnson took home the championship that should have belonged to Jeff Gordon.  Now, I'm not a Jeff Gordon fan so that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I am a Tony Stewart fan and this year eleven other drivers are vying to take home his championship.  He had a 197-point lead after Richmond, but starts this Chase ten points behind Mark Martin.  NASCAR got tired of drivers running away with championships, clinching them with races left on the schedule, and came up with this playoff format.

I also don't like the scoring system for the Chase.  It's the same as any other time of the season, but twelve drivers are competing for the championship alongside 31 other drivers who have their own reasons for being there.  Shouldn't the Chase drivers be scored separately from the other drivers?

NASCAR Basics: The Tracks: Loudon

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Bob and Gary Bahre purchased Bryar Motorsports Park, reconfigured the road course track and added a 1.058 mile oval, and opened New Hampshire International Speedway in 1990. It's located near Loudon, New Hampshire, about an hour's drive from Boston.

NASCAR made its debut at the track, a Busch Series race won by Tommy Ellis, in July 1990. For the next three years, NHIS hosted two Busch Series races per year. They were successful and the track was added to the Cup schedule in 1993. The inaugural Slick 50 300 was won by Rusty Wallace.

In 1997, NHIS added a second Cup race. Bob Bahre and Bruton Smith bought North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina and moved its two Cup races out of the aging facility -- one to New Hampshire and the other to Texas Motor Speedway. In 2007, the Bahres sold NHIS to Smith's Speedway Motorsports, Inc. and the name was changed to New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

In 2000, a pair of accidents claimed the lives of Adam Petty and Kenny Irwin Jr., two promising young drivers. Both involved stuck accelerator pedals and head-on crashes into the wall. Petty's accident occurred during practice for a Busch Series race, Irwin's during the first Cup race at the track that year. The track owners decided to use restrictor plates when the Cup Series returned in September. The race, which had no lead changes and was won by Jeff Burton, was so boring that the experiment was quickly dropped.

In 2002, to create more competitive racing at the track, progressive banking (four degrees in the bottom lanes to seven degrees at the top) was added to the turns. The following year, SAFER barriers were installed around the track.

One incident at the track changed NASCAR rules. In the September 2003 Sylvania 300 Dale Jarrett wrecked and was stuck in the middle of the track. He was in danger of being hit as cars raced back to the caution flag. NASCAR quickly changed the rules, banning racing back to the line and instituting the "Lucky Dog."

The track at Loudon has been described as "Martinsville on steroids." NHMS is a little over a mile compared to the half-mile at Martinsville, but the idea is the same -- drag race down the straightaway, fight through the almost flat turns, then drag race down the other straightaway. Most of the action usually takes place in the corners, especially as cars exit side-by-side and head down the 1500 feet straightaways.

Juan Montoya holds the qualifying record at Loudon -- 133.431 mph set in September 2009. Jeff Gordon is the top money winner at the track with over $3 million in earnings. He has fifteen Top 10s, twelve Top 5s and three wins in 26 starts. Denny Hamlin has the best average finish -- 6.5 in four starts -- while Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin have average finishes just over 10.

New Hampshire Motor Speedway hosts several regional racing series, including the NASCAR Camping World Series East and the NASCAR Whelan Modified Tour, amateur series events sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America, Loudon RoadRace Series, Vintage Racer Group, U.S. Classic Racing Association and the World Karting Association. NHMS also hosts the only Craftsman Truck Series, Nationwide Series, and Sprint Cup Series races held in the New England area. The Lenox Industrial Tools 300 is held at the end of June or the beginning of July and the Sylvania 300, the first race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, is held in September. Sprint Cup races are 300 laps or 317.4 miles.



(diagram from NASCAR.com)

NASCAR Basics: The Tracks Master List

NASCAR Tracks: Dover

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Dover International Speedway is exactly one-mile long, and is one of only two concrete tracks on the Sprint Cup schedule -- the other is Bristol.  And Dover is very similar to Bristol.  It is high-banked -- 24 degrees in the turns and nine degrees on the 1076-feet straightaways -- which translates into a lot of speed.  The turns are long and sweeping.  The close quarters lead to a lot of action; a single-car spin can turn into a multi-car accident in a heartbeat.  No wonder they call it "the Monster Mile."

The track was opened in 1969 as Dover Downs International Speedway, and was a part of Dover Downs, a dual-purpose facility designed for horse racing and motorsports events.  The racing surface was originally asphalt.  NASCAR has been racing at Dover since the very beginning.  From 1972 to 1997, Cup races at Dover were 500 miles, but in 1997, NASCAR changed the rules, limiting 500-mile races to tracks longer than a mile.  Cup races at Dover have been 400 miles since.  In 1995 the speedway became NASCAR's first concrete track.

The Delaware legislature voted to allow slot machines at pari-mutuel horse racing facilities in 1994. Dover Downs took advantage, opening Dover Downs Slots in 1995 and a hotel, the Dover Downs Hotel and Casino, in 2002. That same year the business split up with the hotel, slots operation and harness racing track retaining the Dover Downs name.  The motorsports track's name was changed to Dover International Speedway, and it became the corporate headquarters for Dover Motorsports, Inc., a publicly held ownership group that also includes Nashville Superspeedway, Gateway International Raceway, and Memphis Motorsports Park.

In 2004, the track added a new wrinkle, the Monster Bridge, "The Most Exciting Seat in Sports." It's a 56-seat, glass-enclosed bridge that extends over the track in Turn 3.  DIS recently completed a multiyear, multimillion dollar "Monster Makeover."  Phase One saw the construction of a new skybox complex, a new and improved media center and other capital improvements.  In Phase Two, Victory Plaza was added, complete with a 46-foot fiberglass sculpture of Miles the Monster, the track's iconic mascot, and over 200 granite plaques dedicated to legendary Dover Drivers.  A FanZone was also added.  Phase Three was mostly track improvements.  The steel inside retaining wall was replaced by a longer concrete wall with a SAFER barrier.  Pit road was widened and a 43rd pit stall was added.  Previously, there were only 42 stalls and the last two qualifiers had to share until a competitor dropped out of the race.

Jeremy Mayfield holds the Sprint Cup qualifying record at Dover, 161.522 mph, set in June 2004.  Richard Petty and Bobby Allison are tied with the most Cup wins at Dover, 7.  Jimmie Johnson leads all active drivers with five wins at DIS.

Dover International Speedway hosts a Sprint Cup race, the Best Buy 400 Benefiting Student Clubs for Autism Speaks, a Nationwide Series race and a Camping World Truck Series race in late May or early June.  In September, the track hosts a Sprint Cup race, the AAA 400, the second race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and a Nationwide Series race.

(diagram from NASCAR.com)

NASCAR Basics: The Tracks: Master List

NASCAR Basics: The Tracks: Master List

As part of my NASCAR Basics series of posts, I'm writing a post about each of the tracks that hold Sprint Cup races. This will be an ongoing process throughout the 2008 season with a new post whenever NASCAR travels to a new track. Then I'll link to that post here, making a master list.

A note: These are loose categories of tracks. Some authoritative sources might have only four categories, combining tracks from one to two miles in length into one big "Intermediate" category. To me, it doesn't make much sense to compare longer, wider, higher speed tracks like Atlanta or Texas to tracks like Phoenix or Dover.

SUPERSPEEDWAYS (over two miles long)

Daytona International Speedway*
Pocono Raceway
Talladega Superspeedway*

* restrictor plate tracks

SPEEDWAYS (1.5 to two miles long)

Atlanta Motor Speedway
Auto Club Speedway (formerly California Speedway)
Charlotte Motor Speedway (formerly Lowe's Motor Speedway)
Homestead-Miami Speedway
Michigan International Speedway
Texas Motor Speedway

INTERMEDIATE TRACKS (one to 1.5 miles long)

Darlington Raceway
Kansas Speedway
Las Vegas Motor Speedway
New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Phoenix International Raceway

SHORT TRACKS (less than a mile long)

Bristol Motor Speedway
Dover International Speedway
Martinsville Speedway
Richmond International Raceway

ROAD COURSES

Infineon Raceway (formerly Sears Point Raceway)