Roger Penske is going to use the 70 acres behind his shop to build his own test track. See the full story at NASCAR.com.
You know, I always wondered why a bunch of teams never got together and built their own test facilities. Take Childress and Hendrick for example, they could have purchased and built their own test facility and used it exclusively for themselves and maybe even have rented it out to other GM teams back in the 90's. This alliance is not that unbelievable, they were the two biggest GM teams in the 90's, until Gibbs came around and they shared technology before. Did you know that the car that Dale Earnhardt drove in the 1996 Winston All-Star race was built as a project car between Hendrick and Childress? A shared technology car, of the experimental variety. Dale didn't like the car much and only drove it for that race.
When North Wilkesboro closed I was surprised that a Cup team or a conglomerate of Cup teams didn't buy it and use it as a test track. I wonder if Junior Johnson were still an owner if he wouldn't have bought it, as I know he used it a test track quite a bit back in the day.
I'm just surprised that this sort of thing hasn't happened sooner. It makes sense from a management perspective to do - less travel time to test facilities, can go home after a day of testing instead of the hotel, can bring what you learned back to the shop immediately and institute any needed changes, etc. It just makes sense at this level of competition to do. You just need the bucks to do it, but if run properly it could also generate money for the racing shop too through rentals, racing schools, skid schools, Special Saturday night races, and the like.
FYI - I just switched over to beta today, not my choice though - Blogger wouldn't let me log on to my blog unless I signed up for it. Anyway, I really have no complaints thus far except I've been kicked off my dashboard a few times, I had a comment magically disappear, and comments that they have been made in the past has had the names erased and changed to anonymous, although I think once you leave me another comment it will automatically reinstate your name on my previous posts (maybe). Take Care.