Rebuilding Pit Road Raceway 5

09/03/2007 From Dirt Country

O.K. First blog, here goes.
Update on the Pit Road Raceway V rebuild. The final name still is up in the air. I choose Pit Road V as a working title simply because there was no talk of a official track name and I didn’t know what to refer to it as. The track dimension are 10’ x 20’, with an approximate average length of 41’per lane, the biggest track currently on the SCORE schedule. The scale 1/5 mile truly does qualify it as a Bull Ring but it looks deceivingly big for the 1/25th scale 1/5th mile designation. . To date the frame has been built and the track surface attached. Quite a bit of work had to be done to align the slots as the original track had the slots on the straights cut using a 16’ long piece of 2”x6” lumber as a cutting guide. This gave the straights a slight curve.
The straights originate from the Stony Creek rebuild in 1993 with the overall dimensions of the track ending up about 28’ x 12’. Rebuild is kind of a misnomer as only the 4’ x 10’ plywood turns were retained from the previous version of the track named Jiff Lube Speedway that was located in Birdsboro, Pa. This meant building a new track around the rather unique turns that resemble the turns of the Indianapolis Speedway and were cut with eye to try to slow down the inner lanes, as the inner lanes usually have the advantage of less distance to cover in the course of lap. It was hoped the tight inner radius of the lane 1 and 2 would cut down on the run away wins in these lanes, It worked as most of the wins came from lanes 3 and 4 followed by 2. 5, 1, than 6. A couple of drivers did bag segment wins from lane 6 but it was usually only the Wiley veterans who could pull it off. Lane 6 at Pit Road Raceway when the track was located at either Stony Creek or Mount Penn was a hairy ride on the edge that was often a coin toss weather it end in a spectacular crash or a decent segment finish. A win from lane six often pointed to the “man to beat” on any particular night.
Well enough for today. More work is to be done on the track tomorrow night. I’ll try to post some pictures.