1996 Schedule
1996 Schedule
This is a brand new facility, that was built during the winter, specifically for sprint cars. It has two tracks, one inside the other, the inner referred to as the quarter mile and the outer, the half mile. It did not take a mathematician to work out that these sizes are very approximate, all that divided the tracks was straw bales that were added for the occasion. The meeting was run on the quarter mile track. The surface looked very good from the spectators gallery, damped and about an inch thick with loose dirt, slightly banked. The outer track was hard clay and heavily banked. An earlier speedway meeting took place 2 weeks earlier (I missed it) and everyone had been very happy with the track conditions. Not the case last night. Most riders I talked to after the races said it was rutty, and with large holes. Just goes to show how wrong appearances to this spectator can be.
The facilities at this track were exemplary. I have never seen such posh restrooms (sorry, breaking into US English there, I mean toilets) at a speedway track, and there were several beers (or what are referred to locally as such) and wines available. The quality of construction looked like a solid commitment to a long term facility. There was some very expensive looking high steel posts around the outside of the track, holding heavy gauge mesh, to stop sprint car parts going into the crowd. This detracted from viewing. But the fact is that such investment in a new sprint car track is encouraging. The fact that it can be used, for speedway is also good. Now if only we could find someone to put up those kind of funds for a new speedway track. . . . .
