South Boston Speedway or "SoBo" is a short track located just outside South Boston, Virginia, U.S.A.. SoBo is located approximately sixty miles east of another area familiar to most NASCAR fans, Martinsville. It is owned by Mattco, Inc, the Mattioli family trust that owns Pocono Raceway, with second-generation member Joe Mattioli III operating the track. NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series has not raced at the track since 1971; however, NASCAR's BUSCH Series (now Nationwide Series) raced here into the new millennium. After the NASCAR Busch Series left the schedule, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competed at SoBo for a couple years. The NASCAR Camping World East Series now hold events here and SoBo continues to play a part in the NASCAR family, hosting Whelen All-American Series late model and USAR Hooter's Pro Cup events. Some of the better known graduates of South Boston's Saturday night weekly events include Jeff Burton, Ward Burton, Elliott Sadler, Stacy Compton, and the Bodine brothers (Todd, Geoff and Brett). Danville, Virginia driver Wendell Scott, the first African-American driver to compete at NASCAR's highest level, also raced in Modified Division events here.
Famous quotes containing the words south, boston and/or speedway:
“These South savannahs may yet prove battle-fields.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The ideal of men and women sharing equally in parenting and working is a vision still. What would it be like if women and men were less different from each other, if our worlds were not so foreign? A male friend who shares daily parenting told me that he knows at his very core what his wife’s loving for their daughter feels like, and that this knowing creates a stronger bond between them.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“The improved American highway system ... isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway ... he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson’s nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)