If I may be so bold that I should say something, I think that in the planning of Aerotropolis (Sydney's second international airport) at Badgery's Creek, that we should also build a 1⅓ mile speedway.
Wait, what?
In my lifetime, the number of motor racing venues has been ravaged. Amaroo Park, Oran Park, Liverpool Raceway, Castlereagh Speedway, Sydney Showgrounds, and Granville Showgrounds have all been closed. Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek now includes a racetrack, drag strip and short track dirt speedway, but when you also consider that we've also lost Catalina Park and Warwick Farm raceway, that's 8 down and only really 1 or 2 up. When you also consider that Wakefield Park near Goulburn has also been permanently closed, the state of motor racing looks pretty dire.
The reason why all of these motor racing venues has been close is the same reason why Luna Park at Milson's Point has no proper roller coaster. What consistently happens is that a place which has been operating for years, and is in the middle of nowhere, gets encroached by housing abd big-box stores and then the whinging begins. Okay, so it isn't nice that motor racing is noisy but then the obvious question is "why did these people move next to a motor racing venue?" My mind boggles.
I like the idea of a big speedway. Australia has a long history of running Sprint Cars and Midgets on dirt tracks, along with Modifieds, Late Models and assorted other things but speedway in Australia has always been run on very dinky little dirt tracks. Quarter-Mile and Third-Mile tracks are compact but they're not brilliant to watch. A Half-Mile venue can be built like its own stadium and that's nice but we still don't get the kind of open throttle racing where tactics and strategy is played out. America with various classes of 'stock car' racing and formula racing, repeatedly demonstrates that high-speed oval racing is brilliant. The Indianapolis 500 is the single biggest day of spectator sport in the world and has been for a very long time. Cars moving around at 200mph is a thing of genuine awe.
However, I think that the undisputed queen of speedway racing in the world, is not Indianapolis or the high banks of Daytona, but rather the track that gained the nicknames of "The Lady In Black" and the track that is "Too Tough To Tame". Darlington Speedway is a Mile And A Third track; which I think is the perfect size for this kind of venue.
Darlington was built in 1950; which means that as the first of the "superspeedways" it was also built before they properly knew how to build them. Sure, Indianapolis Motor Speedway had been around since 1911 but it had never been used for stock cars. Darlington was built in an era when stock car racing was still being run on dirt ovals like other speedway racing was, and across the sands of Daytona Beach.
Legend has it that this mile and a bit egg-shaped oval, was shaped that way because the owner wanted to keep his duck pond at one end of the track. Because the track was already built with a compromise, what resulted was something that wouldn't be copied. The two ends of the race track are different radius corners. Not only are they different radius corners but the banking at the two ends of the track is different. This means that a car which is set up for one end of the track will not do as well at the other and vice versa.
Using Google Maps, I can cut out Darlington and plonk it the proposed area for Aerotropolis. It fits excellently up in the north-western corner, near The Northern Road and Elizabeth Drive.
Building a motor racing venue next to a 24-hour international airport also solves the problem of bringing people to the venue because in building the necessary infrastructure for an airport to exist, that menas that the transport links are already there. Calder Park's problem was that it was out in the middle of nowhere. The truly great motor racing venue of Mount Panorama 'Tourist Drive' was kind of built in the middle of nowhere but due to the legendary status it has built up for itself over the years, people are prepared to make the trip.
If we're going to build an airport with 24 hour flights, then the noise produced by this thing will be immense. One of the perennial problems that motor racing venues have is that people will complain about the noise but if we were to build a venue right next to an international airport, people can hardly complain, can they?
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