SMI Examining Potential Changes for Texas Motor Speedway

The future of Texas Motor Speedway has been a hot topic since the Cup Series playoff race in September. According to Speedway Motorsports, there are some potential changes that could happen regarding the current configuration.

SMI President and CEO Marcus Smith addressed the possibility following the trip to Homestead-Miami Speedway. He appeared on “The Dale Jr. Download” podcast and discussed a variety of topics. One of the biggest was the ongoing discussion about potentially changing Texas Motor Speedway.

“So what we’re doing now is working with iRacing to research a couple of different profile changes that we might do at the track,” Smith explained. “I kind of want to investigate what the options are. We learned a ton with iRacing around Atlanta.”

As Smith continued to explain, the process is still early on. SMI is examining potential options, but the company does not know exactly what will take place in the coming months and years. Smith just thinks that there will be some changes to Texas Motor Speedway after the All-Star Race and the playoff race each created conversations for different reasons.

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There Will Be Limits to Potential Changes

What changes will Smith and SMI make? There is no clear answer. Though there is one thing that Smith pointed out during his discussion with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mike Davis. There is a limit to the configuration changes based on certain factors.

Texas Motor Speedway is a quad-oval with a similar layout to Charlotte Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway. It is technically an oval, but there are extra turns by the start-finish line that make the track wider.

“When you talk about what options are out there and how big the changes can be, where the grandstands are is virtually immovable,” Smith said. “You’ve got to deal with where the current grandstands are, where the wall is, where the lights are to do something that is reasonable in the budget to be able to make that happen.”

SMI would not be able to remove the widest section of the track in order to make TMS a more traditional oval like Homestead-Miami Speedway or New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The grandstands would be too far away from the action taking place.

Similarly, it would not be possible to convert TMS into a short track as some people have suggested. The changes would be too much considering the grandstands and other infrastructure already in place.

“The profile of the track is the thing that you can work with, and there is a lot in a profile,” Smith added. “I mean, look at Atlanta Motor Speedway. We took Atlanta Motor Speedway and took it from what people would call — in the past, they would call it a cookie-cutter mile-and-a-half — and have turned it into a mile-and-a-half superspeedway.”

One of the potential changes on the table is the use of progressive banking like at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Another is bringing all of the turns down and making the track much flatter. A third option is creating another mini-superspeedway.

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Another Track Reconfiguration Made History

A unique part of the ongoing discussion surrounding TMS is that iRacing is heavily involved. The simulation platform provides SMI with the ability to make numerous changes without actually using construction equipment.

This involvement continues a historic process that took place in Georgia. SMI used iRacing to design the Atlanta Motor Speedway reconfiguration, which was a first for NASCAR. The company made numerous tweaks before settling on the final design, which it brought to life after Kurt Busch won the Quaker State 400 in 2021.

“Atlanta is the first track that’s been built based on an iRacing simulation,” Smith continued. “A lot like the race teams talk about simulations now. And they can show up at the track, and they’ve already run it with that setup.

“We were able to not just build a track with a CAD drawing and all the engineering and math that goes into designing a track, but we were able to put virtual cars and go race and tweak it and make little itty bitty changes that made a big difference in Atlanta Motor Speedway. The way it raced is the way we saw it was gonna race in iRacing.”

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