The landscape for major league motorsports entertainment facilities in North America has changed drastically over the past two decades. Prior to 1990, traditional racetrack facilities — many of which dated back to the 1950s or even earlier — ruled the professional motorsports roost in the United States. Much of NASCAR’s premier division schedule was run on primarily southeastern tracks, while Indy Cars were mostly a phenomenon of the Midwest.

Then, coinciding with the meteoric rise of NASCAR racing’s popularity nationwide, came the track building boom of the 1990s, and suddenly there were new projects proposed in some areas that no one had ever considered for construction of a racetrack. Other areas, most notably southern California, had been the site of such tracks as Riverside International Raceway and Ontario Motor Speedway, but no new major projects had been proposed in the Golden State since the late '60s.  

Fueled by unprecedented television coverage and a new crop of superstar drivers, professional racing was booming and existing facilities were filled to capacity with fans eager to travel great distances to get their motorsports fix. New England, long a hotbed of short track stock car racing, was firstto be addressed, and New Hampshire Motor Speedway opened with much fanfare in 1990.