Texas Motor Speedway is an oval track racing in the northernmost portion of Fort Worth, Texas. The speedway measures about 2.32 km with a banked 20 degrees in turns 1 and 2 and 24 degrees in turns 3 and 4. The Texas Motor Speedway has a quad-oval design where its front straightaway juts outward slightly, and its design is kind of similar to the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The Texas Motor Speedway is owned by a company named Speedway Motorsports, Inc., and they happen to own other NASCAR tracks as well. In this article, we are going to know more about the dashing history of Texas Motor Speedway.
History
Ever since its inception in 1996, the speedway was managed by the racing promoter, Eddie Gossage. According to qualifying speeds in 2004, 2005, and 2006, the Texas Motor Speedway was considered as the fastest non-restrictor plate track on the NASCAR Circuit. The speedway has qualifying speeds over 192 mph and corner speeds of about 200 mph or 320 km per hour. But, as the racing tracks of the Texas Motor Speedway continues to wear, the qualifying speeds at the Atlanta Motor Speedway become consistently faster than at Texas.
During the speedway’s construction in September 1996, its name was briefly changed to Texas International Raceway. Initially, Speedway Motorsports Inc’s track naming convention planned to have the words “Motor Speedway” as a part of the name. But, in August 1996, there was a small quarter-mile dirt raceway in Alvin, Texas, who filed suit to use the said name. In December that same year, a settlement was made between the owners and the Texas Motor Speedway became the name of the 2.4 km oval.
Between 2001 and 2002, the track was repaved because it has a hole in turn three. In April 2001, the Firestone Firehawk 600, which is a CART race, was scheduled held on the Texas Motor Speedway. However, 21 out of the 25 drivers complained that they experienced dizziness and disorientation during the practice and qualifying exercises. Experts said that the drivers experienced sustained G forces of over 5 Gs, which is more than a person can tolerate. That is why CART decided to cancel the race two hours before it started to avoid drivers from blacking out on the track.
In August 2010, the management of the speedway held a press conference where they announce that the Texas Motor Speedway’s spring race will be a Saturday night event in 2011. That same year, the Samsung Mobile 500 was held at TMS, and the apron of the speedway was repaved. In 2012, Eddie Gossage decided to add a carnival outside to help promote the TMS’s Wild Asphalt Circus theme. The following year, they announced that they would add the world’s largest video screen by the 2014 spring Cup race. The said screen is about 218 feet wide and 94.6 feet tall. Panasonic made it, and they called it the Big Hoss. This is the reason why the Texas Motor Speedway decided not to sell tickets on the backstretch during the NASCAR Cup Series races in 2014. The big-screen reduced the seating capacity of the track to 112,552.
