Formal announcement of the re-opening of the Thompson Speedway road course
 

Courtesy of Mark Brown:


December 28, 2012

"All,

With a lot of hard work and support from the motorsport enthusiast community and the tireless efforts of our entire staff, I am thrilled to formally announce that we will once again be hosting road racing events at Thompson Speedway.

First, I would like to thank everyone for their support and patience over these last couple years as we developed final plans to bring back to life the historic road course here at Thompson Speedway. It has been an exciting endeavor and a pleasure to have been able to meet with each of the different groups that are involved in the road racing community. Now, because of these efforts, all the elements for the project have fallen in place.

As soon as conditions allow, we will begin construction in the spring of 2013. We will work throughout the 2013 NASCAR racing season with a final build out set for mid-fall 2013. I must point out that during this time, every effort will be made to minimize disruptions to our NASCAR events and to our customers at the Speedway golf course. Both of these operations will continue to be a part of our sports complex and we look forward to maintaining a high level of commitment to these activities going forward.

With this being said we project to have a full 2014 road racing season. To help everyone plan for our opening and your racing activities, we will begin reserving club rental dates in February 2013 for the 2014 season. You will be notified of the process on reserving these dates soon.

To assist with our communications to the entire motorsports community, we will shortly have a new motorsports park website and blog up and running. This will help keep everyone up to date in real time on the progress of the project throughout the season.

This is an exciting time for everyone at the Thompson Speedway organization and for all of those involved in helping to make our dream of racing again at the oldest road racing facility in the country a reality.

Thank you again for all of your support and have a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.


Sincerely,

Jonathan Hoenig"

Course Layout...
 

Again Thanks to Mark Brown...

wow, this is simply great news.
subscribed

2 hours from my house, it's actually closer for the Boston guys!

Layout
 

I'll try to improve on the image when I get on my office computer. The attachment wasn't easily uploaded using my IPad.

The track looks like fun with the advantage going to handling over HP

I just hope they figure out a way to do the transitions from the outside oval to road course better than Pocono..

As a former motorcycle road racer...I pleaded with Jon to make sure the engineers make it a seemless transition....road course to track. He has heard that complaint from many, so he is already looking at that.

Mark

Old photos from racing there seem to indicate considerable elevation, is that so?

Hope so as it will make the tranision from road to oval easier to accomplish if you are driving down into and up out of the sloped straights of the oval... at least makes sense to me that way. Be interesting to see how it progresses.

Ideally there would be gradual elevation change leaving/joining the oval to the road course. Case in point is NHMS where there is an "uphill" that leaves the oval and a "Downhill" that rejoins it. The transitions are very harsh and I'm always amazed that cars with low lying fruit don't end up harvested.

Large Ovals that run the road course on the inside have much less of a challenge, but for some reason Pocono's re-entry (i've only run the North course) was pretty nasty. Again, it's close and if it's made with safety in mind and it's smooth, i'll be there. Heck, doesn't even have to be all that safe as I can hit stuff you can barely SEE from the track anyway! :D

This track will have in common with New Hampshire the fact that it is an OUTfield road course, unlike Pocono, which is an INfield, like most.
Meanwhile, I'm hearing that Pocono's infield is now completely repaved, the South and East courses are now joined. It is possible to have simultaneous events on separate circuits, and there is FIA curbing now in place. I might even go back there and try it out.

Sounds good, there was little infield curbing at all when i was there IIRC, and it was really narrow. That and the ski jump back onto the track by pit out and I didn't go back. I was smooth though..

I'm sure you were super smooth, as ever Gary!
I, however, found a line through a left that entailed all four in the dirt to apex and it worked great.

by the way, are we talking clockwise or counterclock?