History of the New Hampshire International Speedway
Speedway Motorsports owns the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, formerly the New Hampshire International Speedway. It hosts NASCAR championship races, go-kart, SCCA and Sprint car competition. The track is a 1-mile oval with a 1.6-mile road course located in Loudon, N.H. The speedway has been in existence since 1960 when it was Bryar Motorsports Park. NASCAR made its racing debut there in 1990.
Other People Are Reading
-
The Beginning
-
The New Hampshire Motor Speedway sits on the site of the old Bryar Motorsports Park, which opened in 1960 and was also known to the community as the Route 106 Midway Raceway. The one-fifth-mile track hosted kart racing on dirt, which was paved from 1961-63. In 1964, the course was reconfigured for auto racing until 1988 and motorcycle competition in 1989. In the 1970s, it also featured a quarter-mile drag strip.
Enter the Bahres
-
Bob and Gary Bahre purchased the track in 1989 and razed the entire complex to make way for the oval and road course. The oval track opened in 1990 and the road course the following year. The track's first NASCAR race was a Busch Series competition. Today's course does not employ any portion of the Bryar track.
-
Construction
-
Construction of the complex took only nine months and is now the largest speedway in the region. The Bahres had the speedway designed and built without consulting engineers and used only one surveyor to map the project. It seats 93,521 spectators.
Success
-
The Busch Series--now named the Nationwide Series--and ultimately races in the top-tier NASCAR series made the new speedway an instant success. Immediately following were the World Karting Association, the largest organization for go-kart racing; the Sports Car Club of America, or SCCA, races; and the Loudon Classic, the longest running motorcycle racing organization in North America.
Track Fatalities
-
Two racing deaths prompted an experiment by track officials. In 2000, Adam Petty was practicing for the Busch Series when he was killed after his throttle got stuck in a turn. At the Winston Cup series Kenny Irwin Jr. died in a similar crash. Speedway owners ordered that restrictor plates be installed on cars to limit throttle speed, but a September 2000 event resulted in a race with no lead changes. The experiment was abandoned a year later.
Mother Nature Interferes
-
New England was struck with a series of storms in 2005-06 that affected the operation of the speedway. Bridges and roads were flooded or washed out that denied some race fans access to the speedway. During one race the track and infield were flooded, but owners managed to resume the race with minimal delays. And a 2008 club race was stopped early when the track, infield and infield tunnel were flooded.
New Owners
-
In 2007, Speedway Motorsports Inc. purchased the 1,100-acre New Hampshire International Speedway from the Bahres for $340 million and renamed the track the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The new owners operate the motor speedways in Atlanta; Bristol, Tenn.; Sonoma, Calif.; Las Vegas; Concord, N.C.; and Fort Worth, Texas.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit New Hampshire Motor Speedway
More Like This
Comments
-
I saw, Kevin Shwants, and Mike Balwin, and Wess Cooly, race at the old track when I was a kid. Very Cool place.
