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Owners of Texas Speedway have announced that they will be closing the 2 mile oval speedway on June 15th and converting the 400 acres into 1400 home sites, a shopping center and land set aside for a future school. The project is costing $55 million.
Dollars speak. Its harder and harder for venues in racing to make money especially now days with demands for safety. NASCAR was about its only draw really.to bad tho.
That's too bad. Texas World was the only 2+ mile superspeedway in the country without an event promoted by the big sanctioning bodies. The late Benny Parsons won the final Winston Cup event at the track in the early '80s.
Pretty sure the France family is determined to turn NASCAR into F1 for sedans and they seem to be doing a good job. Don't follow their rules and you lose your race date. Former racer turned track owner Andy Hillenburg tried to keep Rockingham speedway alive by installing NASCAR mandated Safer barriers but that was not good enough and NASCAR never gave him another date after one truck race. I guess Andy could not afford Frances' sanction fee.
Any non NASCAR owned tracks are only keeping their dates because Brian France has not figured out how to buy them out yet.
Interesting that the demise of Texas World comes up, because recently there has been some articles about the state of disrepair that North Wilkesboro has fallen into as well, and some grass roots efforts trying to save it.
I do not think Texas World has held a top tier Nascar race since the 80's. However, Nascar teams have used it for speedway testing. Wilkesboro lost it's date after 96, and outside of a year or two of use a few years ago has sat and decayed since.
SMI and ISC (Nascar) basically run who gets dates. I wouldn't be surprised to see SMI try and pick up Pocono (one of the last independent tracks) so they can "steal" a race date to give to someone else (basically what did in Wilkesboro).
That's a shame. Just what the area needs more homes and shopping(sarcasm).
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