History Of Kansas Speedway

Kansas Speedway is a 1.5 miles long tri-oval race track located in the city of Kansas. Built in the year 2001, the speedway plays host to two race weekends annually. The International Speedway Corporation owns and operates the speedway.
The races being currently held in Kansas speedway include STP 400 and Hollywood Casino 400 (Sprint Cup Series of NASCAR), Kansas Lottery 300 (NASCAR Nationwide Series), O’Reilly Auto Parts 250 (NASCAR Camping World Truck Series) and Kansas ARCA 150.
It was in 1996 that the International Speedway Corporation mooted the idea to build a facility for racing in the Midwest. Though Missouri was also under consideration, officials settled for Kansas because of better funding options that were available there. The architectural design work and construction were contracted to HNTB and Turner Construction, respectively.
Construction on the 1,200 acres of land was started in May 1999 and the sale of preferred tickets commenced in the month of July. The first ticket was purchased by George Brett, a former player of Kansas City Royals and an inductee to the hall of fame for baseball. The heavy demand for preferred tickets prompted the International Speedway Corporation to enhance the capacity to 82,000 from the originally planned 75,000.
Though it was initially planned to complete the construction in 2000, it could be finished only by early 2001 because of delays caused by bad weather and lawsuits filed by the landowners around the area. Both IndyCar and NASCAR had announced in May 2000 itself the dates of the following inaugural events to be conducted in the Speedway during the 2001 season. July 8 – Indy Racing LeagueSeptember 29 – NASCAR Busch SeriesSeptember 30 – Winston Cup Series of NASCAR
In August 2000, NASCAR announced a third event, Craftsman Truck Series, to be held at the Kansas Speedway on July 7, 2001. The first open test was conducted at the Kansas Speedway in April 2001 with Hoosier Tires and CART teams sanctioning Dayton Indy Lights test.
The gates of Kansas Speedway were thrown open for Winston West Series Kansas 150 of NASCAR Series Kansas 150 as well as BPU 200 of ARCA RE/MAX, inaugural races, in June 2001. This was followed by the Indy Racing League and Craftsman Truck Series of NASCAR in July. The NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series and NASCAR Busch Series were conducted in September 2001 as announced earlier.
In the year 2007, the weekend races that were traditionally held during the July 4 weekend were moved to April. As part of International Speedway Corporation’s date realignment, an additional Sprint Cup Series was also awarded to Kansas Speedway in August 2010. Lights were added to the Speedway and the first event of this Series was held in June 2011.
Traditionally, all the NASCAR races are held during the day and lights are used in the event of a delay caused by rains. An ARCA race held on October 7, 2011 at the Speedway was the first night race.
In July the same year, Kansas Speedway announced improvements to be carried out, including repaving of the track surface and upgrading it to progressive banking, reconfiguring the oval and addition of another road course.
The Sprint Cup race to be held this Sunday will be the last event before the track is repaved. There is an ongoing debate in this regard. Many feel that instead of repaving the track with new asphalt the authorities should continue to repair patches. They argue that it makes driving a little more difficult and prevents average drivers from competing with the talented.
However, Chris Schwartz, Kansas Speedway sales and marketing vice president, said that the changes in climate have damaged the track and repaving is necessary to prevent huge chunks of asphalt from coming up as it happened at the Daytona International Speedway.

Did not find what you were looking for? Search Google here Now!

Filed Under: TRACKS

About the Author

I am a construction worker by day. Sandblaster in my free time , And race fan in my fun time. I have been involved in short track asphalt racing for over 30 years. Inducted into the S.A.F.E.R. (Suffolk hall of fame) and named Riverhead raceway crew chief of the year. Crew chief for two time World figure 8 champion, And 8 time Riverhead raceway track champion Roger Maynor with a record 104 feature wins .

Comments (29)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your web site is fantastic, let alone the content!

  2. qksqhkjep says:

    wphuuqhss adqrd ilijxgi lkyw nbnhtntrnumfejk

  3. Chet Mister says:

    My brother recommended I might like this website. He was entirely right. This post truly made my day. You can not imagine simply how much time I had spent for this info! Thanks!

  4. I really like your writing style, wonderful information, thanks for putting up : D.

  5. I love your insightful blog. good work. I hope you produce more. I will carry on watching

  6. Hi, i think that i saw you visited my web site so i got here to “go back the want”.I am trying to find issues to improve my site!I guess its good enough to use some of your ideas!!

  7. Esta Bierle says:

    I found your blog site on google and examine a couple of of your early posts. Proceed to keep up the superb operate. I simply additional up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. In search of forward to reading more from you afterward!…

  8. Thanks for sharing superb informations. Your website is very cool. I’m impressed by the details that you have on this web site. It reveals how nicely you understand this subject. Bookmarked this web page, will come back for more articles. You, my friend, ROCK! I found simply the info I already searched everywhere and just couldn’t come across. What a perfect site.

  9. Fabian Cora says:

    You have brought up a very fantastic points , thanks for the post.

  10. I like this weblog very much, Its a very nice berth to read and obtain info .

  11. Great write-up, I am regular visitor of one’s website, maintain up the excellent operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time. “He who seizes the right moment is the right man.” by Johann von Goethe.

  12. Woh I your articles , saved to fav! .

  13. I like this web site it’s a master piece! Glad I discovered this on google.

  14. thank you for all your efforts that you have put in this. Very interesting info. “My opponent called me a cream puff. … Well, I rushed out and got the baker’s union to endorse me.” by Claiborne Pell.

  15. P2P4U net says:

    Its tough to find experienced consumers on this topic, however you sound like you understand what you’re speaking about! Many thanks

  16. F*ckin’ awesome things here. I am very satisfied to look your post. Thank you a lot and i am having a look ahead to contact you. Will you kindly drop me a mail?

  17. wheelpod says:

    I appreciate your useful blog. good work. I hope you release more. I will continue subscribing

  18. Lisa Gurnsey says:

    I just want to tell you that I’m all new to weblog and actually liked your web-site. Probably I’m likely to bookmark your site . You really have impressive well written articles. Thanks a bunch for sharing your web page.

  19. Very good written article. It will be valuable to anybody who usess it, as well as me. Keep up the good work – i will definitely read more posts.

  20. I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I don’t know who you are but definitely you are going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already ;) Cheers!

  21. Bonnie Raitt says:

    I do believe all of the ideas you’ve presented for your post. They’re very convincing and can definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are too brief for beginners. May just you please lengthen them a bit from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.

  22. Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it’s truly informative. I’m going to watch out for brussels. I’ll be grateful if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!

  23. I like the efforts you have put in this, thank you for all the great blog posts.

  24. History Of Kansas Speedway | racersart.com is best food pyramid for History Of Kansas Speedway | racersart.com

  25. Edward Nigro says:

    Oh my goodness! Amazing article dude! Thanks, However I am going through troubles with your RSS. I donít know the reason why I cannot subscribe to it. Is there anybody else having identical RSS issues? Anyone who knows the answer will you kindly respond? Thanks!!

  26. I am not certain where you are getting your info, but great topic. I must spend some time finding out more or working out more. Thank you for wonderful info I used to be looking for this information for my mission.

  27. payday loans says:

    hey there and thank you in your information – I’ve definitely picked up anything new from right here. I did on the other hand experience a few technical points the use of this site, since I experienced to reload the website lots of times previous to I may just get it to load properly. I have been thinking about if your web host is OK? Now not that I’m complaining, however sluggish loading instances occasions will sometimes affect your placement in google and can injury your high quality rating if ads and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Anyway I’m including this RSS to my email and could look out for a lot more of your respective fascinating content. Ensure that you update this again soon..

  28. I seldom drop comments, however i did some searching and wound up here History Of Kansas Speedway | racersart.com. And I actually do have a couple of questions for you if it’s allright. Is it simply me or does it appear like some of these comments come across like coming from brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are writing on additional sites, I would like to keep up with everything fresh you have to post. Could you make a list of every one of your community sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?

  29. some truly wonderful content on this website , thanks for contribution.

Leave a Reply




If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar.