No more Irwindale Speedway?

Bummer.

http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/03/27/42134/iconic-irwindale-speedway-set-to-close/

Desperate need for shopping malls again apparently.

Awesome. I was just thinking the other day that we needed another outlet mall.

So 2 pretty major tracks closing this year. Irwindale and Texas World. I guess I need to buy 200 Acres in the middle of no where and have a dirt track.

I had not realized Irwindale Speedway was only 16 years old.

California logic: let's tear down a very popular racetrack and wedge an outlet mall between a freeway, a strip mine and a landfill. Great thinking....

I'd love to see who is gonna be making money off this strip mall and how close that money is to the city council members that voted to close the track down.

I went to a lot of the early drift events at Irwindale, and can't imagine a mall surviving there unless the town has changed a lot. 10 years ago it was a very industrial area.

In honor of Irwindale, here are some pictures I took at the early D1GP events there.

Lancer007 wrote: California logic: let's tear down a very popular racetrack and wedge an outlet mall between a freeway, a strip mine and a landfill. Great thinking.... I'd love to see who is gonna be making money off this strip mall and how close that money is to the city council members that voted to close the track down.

I was there not too long ago. There really is not much around there. Two open pits, a freeway and a large substation mostly:

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1055786,-117.9904229,3450m/data=!3m1!1e3

You know, that would be a perfect place for a race track....

The management was in some financial troubles which is why they sold the track a few years back to an outlet mall developer. Still like someone else said. City council probably had something to do with whats going in there. Always sucks to see a track shut down.

Sounds like what happened to Chicago Motor Speedway.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Motor_Speedway

I was there during CART practice when they were filming Driven. It was kind of cool to see a movie being filmed.

Unfortunately Chicagoland Speedway was built only a couple years after CMS and they lost all the races to the cookie cutter speedway in Joliet. It was only open 5 years.

It's still a dusty industrial area, surrounded by building materials landfills, asphalt reprocessing plants, and junkyards.

My office is also close enough that I can see the lights when they're on and hear the cars running down the 1/8mile strip on Thursdays as I leave work.

If they put a mall there the traffic is gonna suuuck. Ugh. Horrible location for a mall too.

Also this is the only drag strip with regular events in the LA area. I don't want to know what's going to happen to street racing when it closes..

series8217 wrote: Also this is the only drag strip with regular events in the LA area. I don't want to know what's going to happen to street racing when it closes..

Have they stopped running at the California Speedway?

As I stated in a previous Irwindale thread, I can't help but feel this all could've been avoided if an Auntie Annie's had just been opened at the track.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Sounds like what happened to Chicago Motor Speedway. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Motor_Speedway I was there during CART practice when they were filming Driven. It was kind of cool to see a movie being filmed. Unfortunately Chicagoland Speedway was built only a couple years after CMS and they lost all the races to the cookie cutter speedway in Joliet. It was only open 5 years.

CMS however, never had the kind of grassroots racing that Irwindale has. CMS was an attempt to build a "NASCAR" track on the cheap out of a former horse racing track. It didn't have a dragstrip or weekly racing or an autocross pad.

Street Racing is already getting pretty serious in LA - look at the picture of the street in this article - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-spectators-chatsworth-fatalities-20150226-story.html You can even see the rubbered patches plain as day on google maps.

drdisque wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Sounds like what happened to Chicago Motor Speedway. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Motor_Speedway I was there during CART practice when they were filming Driven. It was kind of cool to see a movie being filmed. Unfortunately Chicagoland Speedway was built only a couple years after CMS and they lost all the races to the cookie cutter speedway in Joliet. It was only open 5 years.

CMS however, never had the kind of grassroots racing that Irwindale has. CMS was an attempt to build a "NASCAR" track on the cheap out of a former horse racing track. It didn't have a dragstrip or weekly racing or an autocross pad. Street Racing is already getting pretty serious in LA - look at the picture of the street in this article - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-spectators-chatsworth-fatalities-20150226-story.html You can even see the rubbered patches plain as day on google maps.

Well this is what Cali gets for being dumb. Close the track poeple take it to the streets.

If it can't make money, it can't stay open. I doubt a mall will do any better though.

That whole neighborhood is a E36 M3hole. Gravel pits, dried up aquaduct, industrial complexes, and junkyards. Of course these are the same people that tried to shut down the Saraichi plant last year because of the fumes. Hope that mall is indoor...

I did get a chance to attend one of their "NASCAR Experiences" last year. Got to run fully prepped Sportsman cars at full blast (if you have the balls) around that oval. Scared the crap out of me.

Losing the drag strip is probably the worst part. Just because those are the people that will take it to the streets if they don't have a venue.

drdisque wrote:

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: Sounds like what happened to Chicago Motor Speedway. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Motor_Speedway I was there during CART practice when they were filming Driven. It was kind of cool to see a movie being filmed. Unfortunately Chicagoland Speedway was built only a couple years after CMS and they lost all the races to the cookie cutter speedway in Joliet. It was only open 5 years.

CMS however, never had the kind of grassroots racing that Irwindale has. CMS was an attempt to build a "NASCAR" track on the cheap out of a former horse racing track. It didn't have a dragstrip or weekly racing or an autocross pad. Street Racing is already getting pretty serious in LA - look at the picture of the street in this article - http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-spectators-chatsworth-fatalities-20150226-story.html You can even see the rubbered patches plain as day on google maps.

Actually it did have grassroots racing, because Sportsman's Park hosted both Horse and Auto racing venues. When Hawthorne Park was built across the street, Sportsman's closed up shop. CMS was an attempt to get a Circle track in the Chicago area that ran professional racing. It was led by Chip Ganassi of all people. Many of the Chicagoland circle tracks that were ideal had been shut down and demolished by this point, so yeah it was done on the cheap, but it was a track.

It didn't need a drag strip or a small dirt track, because Route 66 had already been built and had those amenities.

Unfortunately, even though CART and the Craftsman Trucks ran there, NASCAR approved the cookie cutter oval to be built across the street from Route 66, which everyone moved to.

It was a terrible track for racing, two long drag strips connected by two hairpin turns. I was there for the Craftsman Trucks and I believe it was ASA or Artgo stock cars, and there was nothing exciting going on. Now I do feel bad as it was a great spot to tie in to the City of Chicago but as cookie cutter as Joliet is, it offers much better racing. I know they have spoken rumors for awhile now about paving the Route 66 dirt track. That would be nice, we have lost Santa Fe Speedway, Raceway Park in Blue Island, and the city of Schereville has been after Illiana for years too. When that owner gets tired of fighting that will leave Grundy and Rockford Speedway. How many people from Chicago will go there? Let's face it, I think it's safe to say whether it was the best racing or not, most of grew up going to our local drag strip, dirt/asphault oval for our initiation to motor sports live and our kids and grandkids are only going to end up going to shopping malls because that's where all the racetracks are. In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

In reply to Iusedtobefast:

Yes Chicagoland offered better racing but to be honest, it's still a cookie cutter oval. It has no character. I went there for the inaugural race back in 2001 and I wasn't wowed by it. I'm not going to say CMS was a great track, because yeah, it wasn't. It could have been a good venue if they put more money into the oval.

Some of the best short tracks (even dragstrips) in the Chicago area fell victim to the urban sprawl and slowly they got shut down and demolished one by one.

I miss small circle tracks. They really had good racing. I remember spending many nights at Crown Point Raceway in high school.

Will wrote:

series8217 wrote: Also this is the only drag strip with regular events in the LA area. I don't want to know what's going to happen to street racing when it closes..

Have they stopped running at the California Speedway?

No they reopened the drag strip recently and run events now but they're weekends only and I think the open events are just once a month. It's also 45 minutes further than Irwindale from Los Angeles... Irwindale is a stones throw from over 10 million people. Fontana is a drive.

series8217 wrote:

Will wrote:

series8217 wrote: Also this is the only drag strip with regular events in the LA area. I don't want to know what's going to happen to street racing when it closes..

Have they stopped running at the California Speedway?

It's also 45 minutes further than Irwindale from Los Angeles... Irwindale is a stones throw from over 10 million people. Fontana is a drive.

That I know. I used to drive to Fontana from Ventura to drag race. It was about 2 hours each way.