What Are Your Favorite American Race Tracks?

What are your five favorite American race tracks?

They can be short tracks, road courses, drag strips or superspeedways. The only requirement in this game is that you must have attended (or participated in) a race at each of them.

Before you list yours, I’ll list mine (and since I’m writing the rules, I’m ignoring the five track limit). Here’s my list:

1. Joliet (Ill.) Memorial Stadium
   The flat, quarter-mile oval where I first covered auto racing, the UARA (United Auto Racing Association) midgets with Henry Pens and others in starting grids that often included the Bettenhausens or Mel Kenyon when they had a night away from U.S. Auto Club competition.




2. Santa Fe Speedway
   "Only one speedway has a track of clay and you ain’t seen nothing ‘til you’ve been to Santa Fe” were the lyrics to the radio commercials for the clay-surfaced track southwest of Chicago, where we’d leave the track coated in a layer of tire rubber and fine clay powder.




3. Berlin Raceway
   As a young sportswriter, this West Michigan short track was part of my auto racing beat. What made this assignment challenging was that my boss, the newspaper’s sports editor, moved to a house across the street from the track and led a group of neighbors trying to close the track because it was noisy on race night.




4. Grattan
   A 2.0-mile road course in West Michigan with a wonderfully long front straight, a very dicey off-camber turn, and runoff zones that would put your car into a swamp.




5. Michigan International Speedway
   Another stop on my regular beat; I scoured maps and drove country roads until I found the really cool, traffic-free “back way” into the track; unfortunately, the state police found the same route and turned it into the primary route for a good portion of spectator traffic.




6. Indianapolis Motor Speedway
   I’m glad I got to go there when the 500 was the biggest race in the world, and I’ll never forget one night when one of the Indy drivers showed me the secret - An after hours and no-longer in use entrance that included driving across the racing surface to get into Gasoline Alley. Crossing the front stretch under a full moon is a haunting experience.




7. Riverside International Raceway
   Where the Archer Brothers gave me a first-hand lesson in bump drafting.




8. Pikes Peak
   Believe it or not, in Europe our Pikes Peak hill climb is considered in the same breath as Indy or Le Mans. The annual “Race to the Clouds” is amazing to witness, especially if it’s the day before the race and you’re riding up the mountain with famed rally driver Rod Millen, and he’s telling you how he remembers all the turns and mentions “you put a wheel off here” and the third time he says that you ask what he’s talking about and he shows you by hanging the right-front tire – the one closest to your seat -- out in mid-air, seemingly thousands of feet above the ground.




9. Black Rock Desert
   An alkaline salt flat northeast of Reno, Nevada, has been the site of recent land speed record runs and was the “track” where I achieved my highest speed driving a car – a USAC-certified 175.781 in a 2001 Porsche 911 Turbo.




10. Bristol Motor Speedway
    NASCAR’s shortest and noisiest track ... but what a place to watch a race at night! Talladega Superspeedway – actually, this is not one of my favorite tracks, but it was a track that provided a special memory -- being scolded for speeding, and at the time I was driving – believe it or not -- a Subaru Forester! Subaru had rented the track to introduce a new-generation Forester to the automotive media. The track set an 80-mph speed limit for our driving, but I wanted to see how the vehicle would do flat out on the high banks. Track officials weren’t pleased, but Subaru certainly was.

 O.K., that’s my list. Now let’s see your favorite five.

Read more from Larry Edsall at iZoom

Photo Credit: Steve Philp