In North American auto racing, particularly with regard to NASCAR, a short track is a racetrack of less than one mile (1.6 km) in length. Short track racing, often associated with fairgrounds and similar venues, is where stock car racing first got off the back roads and into organized and regulated competition. Many traditional fans and purists still see short track racing as the "real" NASCAR, because the lower speeds make "paint swapping," where the bodies of the cars actually rub against one another, practical without a very high likelihood of serious accidents. In fact, NASCAR sanctions such "club" racing, offering the Whelen All-American Series as a national championship for the drivers, and an invitational race for club racers. In 2007, NASCAR is increasing marketing of the short tracks with the "NASCAR Home Tracks" campaign, with Greg Biffle, Elliott Sadler, and Carl Edwards featured in advertising to market short track racing. In some cases a Sprint Cup star or two will race in a weekly short-track event held usually on a short track near that week's race, or in a midweek special, such as the Slinger Nationals at Wisconsin's Slinger Super Speedway, a quarter-mile track (but is not NASCAR-sanctioned).
Ken Schrader, Tony Stewart, Dave Blaney, Scott Wimmer, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. all own short tracks, most of them being dirt. Stewart owns the Eldora Speedway, which features Sprint Cup stars and other nationally recognised drivers in the "Prelude to the Dream" dirt late model race. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is a partner in the Paducah (Kentucky) International Speedway.
In recent years, there has been a gradual push away from short track venues for Sprint Cup (the highest level of NASCAR) in favor of longer tracks. This is due to larger venues having accommodations for more fans (although the short track in Bristol, Tennessee, Bristol Motor Speedway, now has over 160,000 seats) and higher speeds.
Famous quotes containing the words short, track, motor and/or racing:
“The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth in the fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We disparage reason.
But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)