Rise of the Road Course
I had a chance several weeks ago to flip over to the NASCAR channel on Sirius radio and hear one caller gripe about how the old-time NASCAR tracks are losing scheduled race dates to newer tracks — particularly on the West Coast (e.g. Las Vegas, California Speedway, etc.) The program host made the point that NASCAR is going to hold races where there is population density, including the NY/NJ/Conn tri-state area. Specifically, the radio host made the comment “…..the current trend is in private motorsport clubs with road courses, such as the pending track in NJ, just minutes away from Philadelphia. While the track won’t have grandstands for 100,000 spectators, it is easy to envision this happening with the right kind of commitment from NASCAR to hold a road course race there.”
The host went on to talk about how NASCAR drivers are increasingly being drawn to road course racing and how having top road courses to drive on would benefit NASCAR. This kind of national exposure for road course racing and private motorsport clubs is definitely encouraging and validates that the private club concept is is no longer an “under the radar” phenomenon — but a legitimate expansion of the consumer motorsport experience.
Site Search Still Underway
It appeared that we had finally solved one of the challenges in getting the club off the ground (site selection) in December 2007 when we located a tract in northern Blanco County near US 281 and FM 962. Our architects constructed a draft Site Plan that confirmed though smaller than the original footprint we targeted, this tract could work. Regretably, the “locals” have rallied to convince the seller not to sell the land the tract for motorsport use so we’re setting sights on alternative unrestricted land tracts in the hopes of being able to update our newsletter readers with a fresh draft Site Plan.