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NASCAR has done an amazing job over the last few years of going to plenty of new tracks and new markets. While this is fun in the present NASCAR has been doing this for a long time, with hundreds of different tracks being used in the sport’s history there are bound to be stragglers that never made the cut. I went back and found a bunch of different tracks that didn’t make it to NASCAR, and today I want to show you 8 of them. These are 8 NASCAR tracks that were never made.
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32 comments
Which NASCAR track that was never built do you wish NASCAR could’ve raced at?
Canadian, simply because in terms of watching other sports, and knowing canadas nascar fanbase, this track would have been an incredible experience to race and be at
Canadian and trump
Canadian and West Virginia
Houston. I’m _dying_ for a tolerable intermediate track within 1000 miles of the Texas Triangle.
It sucks that Canadian Motor Speedway wasn’t made. Especially since there was always an issue with the track. Sucks as a Canadian racing fan.
Same
I hope some day we have a NASCAR track near the Buffalo, NY area. Us Buffalo natives love more than just the Bills and Sabres, we love racing too. The only NASCAR track we have in New York State is Watkins Glen, which is fine but its all we have.
Fellow WNY’er here and I agree. Canadian Motor Speedway would’ve been awesome for us.
Hell Yeah
I had a coworker at my dealership, tell me that Texas Motor Speedway was originally planned to be built in Grand Prairie, TX. Where Lone Star Park currently sits at today. I don’t know how much truth is into that, but he did live in that area of Grand Prairie for a long time.
As a former Colorado resident, a racetrack thats not Pikes Peak or CNS would be fire
There were plans in the summer of 2011 to build a 1.25 mile racetrack just south of Branson, Mo., with Russell Cook funding the project. Pretty sure they did dirt work, but financial issues killed the project. You can see where the track was going to be on Google Earth, about 5-6 miles south of Branson on US Hwy 65.
I live in Springfield and my mom is in Branson. It was being developed and 2years later nothing. I believe the airport and big cedar lodge took over the land
Turn that sucker into a bigger Dirt only track big enough to do the Cup and Trucks dirt races.
I wish Riverside would have went through, but they were way too ambitious. If they just focused on making a road course with an oval and maybe a drag strip it could have worked, but they went way too far. Riverside is my favorite road course ever, and outside of Old Interlagos is the best RC in American history. I know it would jave been a hit, just unfortunate we never got to see it
I hear stories about riverside from my older buddies wish I could have gone
Adirondack Speedway in New Breman NY actually had Busch/K&N/ARCA North/East races on a half mile. But the big plan was the “Almost Mile.” You can still see the excavated banking that was never used on Google Maps.
Great video. One track that could be added to this list is Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet in Brazil. This track hosted the Brazilian GP for F1 from 1977-1989 & then CART from 1996-2000 on a Pocono style triangular track. The track stopped hosting CART events in 2001 when the Rio government failed to pay the sanctioning fee on time. However there was talk of the track possibly being renovated for a return of Indycar (that ended up going to Sao Paulo a few years later) in 2010 along with NASCAR coming there for their first ever race in Brazil with the Truck Series & they were in the planning stages of this. This was because at the time, Nelson Piquet Jr was racing in the Truck Series & the local government wanted the son of whom the track was named after to race on it & market NASCAR to the local population. However all of those plans were scrapped once Rio was named the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics & the local government decided to tear down the track to build facilities for the rowing events. In fact the main grandstand for the track was used for the same purpose for the rowing events.
Correction: Was a trapezoid shaped oval track, not an tri-oval.
There was supposed to be a bunch of different types of tracks built in Augusta, Georgia around Augusta International Raceway but those plans fell through as well.
I just assumed that the #1 would have been the indoor track that was going to be built near Pittsburgh International Airport in the late ‘90s. It really almost happened. Bummed that it isn’t on the list.
That would have been awesome to go see the Cup Series racing in my neck of the woods. Being someone from the Laurel Highlands in Western Pennsylvania, it would have been amazing to go to. They were probably even ahead of it’s time, as a track like that would probably work today. They even planned to have a dome. Such a shame it never happened. I love Pocono Raceway, but this would have been better. But NASCAR is looking at a potential Pittsburgh Street Course, so at least there’s potential for the Pittsburgh market. Western Pennsylvania needs to try to have a shot at a NASCAR race. But you have major obstacles to overcome. My local short track, Jennerstown Speedway in Somerset County, is good for the local short track racing scene, but the design of it is not enough to host a NASCAR sanctioned race unless the track gets major renovations. Motordrome Speedway in Smithton out in Westmoreland County closed in 2016, and has been idling since then. And Lake Erie Speedway out in Erie is sort of like Pikes Peak Raceway, with only occasional non sanctioned races going on there right now.
As a Canadian race fan I have to say I would love to have seen the Canadian track built and the Riverside one looks really interesting too doesn’t really matter though does it
The track in West Virginia sounds interesting. A shame it never materialized.
I grew up between Charleston and Huntington, WV and this is the first I’ve ever heard about WV motor speedway. It would’ve been highly successful then and would be now.
Branson Missouri was supposed to have a track years ago as well. Some of the land even got cleard out but that was about it. It was a 150 million dollar project that aimed to be completed in 2013.
Late 90s during the period of rapid expansion my former boss took a helicopter ride across the skies of south Louisiana with Bill France, Buddy Baker and Ned Jarrett to scout a location for a new track.
As much as I would’ve loved it, it would probably be closed by now too. Incredible story though
Someone made Houston Superspeedway on NR2003 back around 2004. It would have been a cool track had it worked out in real life.
I’m from the St Louis area, and I remember that before Gateway was renovated and turned into a NASCAR track, there was a tentative plan to build a 1/2 mile NASCAR short track in nearby Shiloh, IL near Scott AFB. I’m not sure how far it ever got, but I remember reading about it.
Great job Iceberg. This isn’t a topic many people would think to make a video about. It seems a common denominator here is the “megacomplex” concept. If some of them just concentrated on one good oval track instead of building several different tracks on one site they might have gotten completed. Local governments seem to always be hostile to the idea of a new track as well.
I grew up around Figure 8 racing and I wish we could build the Eight Bowl from NR2003. 2.5 mile Figure 8 track with Daytona’s banking (but with a gradual grade up/down & bridge in the center so no wrecks in the middle lol). It’d be interesting to see the plate racing dynamic with the high lane/low lane constantly swapping.