Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Oval trivia and drag racing 101

Todays In the Groove is a little trivia about the O'Reilly Raceway Park oval and a tidbit of drag racing information.

On the .686-mile oval the one lap qualifying record for the NASCAR Nationwide series is held by David Green who went around the track in a Chevrolet, in 1994, in 21.766 seconds at 113.461 miles per hour.

In drag racing the terminal speed is maximum or top speed at the finish line.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Racing and building

Welcome back and I hope everyone had a good weekend! Plenty of racing action took place across the country and congratulations to Ashley Force-Hood on her second NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Funny Car win. Tony Schumacher found his way to victory lane and his team is still one to contend with come the Countdown to the Championship. NHRA returns to O’Reilly Raceway Park over Labor Day weekend during the Mac Tools U. S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil.

At our facility, the construction of new administrative is rapidly taking shape. The structural steel has been erected, the roof is in place and rough plumbing has begun. Construction will continue during the course of the summer months.

When the building is completed it will feature 11 offices, ticket sales area, conference room, break room, work stations for seasonal interns, storage areas, and mail room. It will also feature an area for retail souvenir sales, display cases for O’Reilly Raceway Park memorabilia; visitor and guest parking will be available outside the building.















Welding taking place on the building.














Rough plumbing is in the ground for the restrooms.















Looking down the side of the building.


Thursday, March 26, 2009

Planning, planning and more planning

Today at O'Reilly Raceway Park has been full of planning meetings, intern interviews and a couple of on the fly meetings. This is normal for the preseason as it takes hours of preparation to do any event. Every aspect of an event has to be discussed and all parties need to be on the same page to make sure the event goes as planned.

Well off to the final meeting of the day and then dinner with the wife and watch some college basketball.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

The green flag is in hand...

Welcome to In the Groove, the official blog of O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis. For those that don't know we are one of five drag racing facilities owned and operated by the National Hot Rod Association, and was built in 1960 and has presented organized racing events since 1961.

From March through October, the facility hosts more than 120 dates of racing on three tracks, a quarter-mile drag strip, a .686-mile paved oval and a 2.5-mile road course. Home to drag racing’s biggest event, the NHRA U.S. Nationals over Labor Day weekend, the drag strip runs more than 50 days of point-to-point action, from national events to street legal community programs.

The oval track draws racing’s biggest events, including annual visits from the NASCAR Nationwide, NASCAR Camping World Series and annual USAC races. The road course provides a home for several racing sanctions, such as SCCA, while providing an ideal resource for driving schools, corporate outings and open-road tests for professional drivers.

We are set to begin the 2009 race season and uring the course of the year we will give you a behind the scenes look at the facility, the fans that attend events, the racers, the staff, fun facts about the facility and more!