History
During 1960s Bill France was wanting to build a track faster and longer than Daytona International Speedway. He would end up breaking ground on an old airfield on May 23, 1968. The track would be named Alabama International Motor Speedway (AIMS), but the name would not carry on and was later changed to Talladega Superspeedway. The track opened on September 13, 1969 costing $4 million. The first race at the new track was unlike any other; all the original drivers abandoned the track because of tire problems which caused Bill France to hire substitute drivers. The first finish was amazing with three cars side by side with the winner being Richard Brickhouse. After the first race, Talladega would host two Sprint Cup Series races a year, one of which would become part of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup. Since the opening year Talladega has hosted many races and has been repaved four times. Talladega would also have many first time winners such as Larry Schild Sr, Richard Brickhouse, Brian Vickers, and Brad Keselowski.
A 4-mile (6.4 km) infield road course was in operation from the track's founding until 1983. Six IMSA GT Championship races were held in the 1970s, including a six hour race in 1978.
During May 2006 Talladega Superspeedway started to re-surface the track and the apron. Construction started on May 1, 2006 and lasted until September 18, 2006. The first race on the resurfaced race track was the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on October 7, 2006.
Read more about this topic: Talladega Superspeedway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)