Jack Lewis - SCR

Pocono Needs Changes, Not Loss of Race

June 12, 2008
Jack Lewis - SCR

It started a week before the series even got to the Pocono Raceway. The bashing, or constructive criticism as Jeff Gordon called it, on the 2.5 mile unique triangular-shaped oval nestled in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Gordon claimed the track needs "a ton of upgrades." He is right. Dr. Joe and Rose Mattioli, the owners of the track have made changes that have had to be made over the past decade or so, including erecting an entirely new garage area for teams, installing the SAFER barriers (which are mandated I believe), and fixing the metal guard rail-style wall on the inside of the speedway, which was brought into the spotlight following Steve Park's vicious flip down the backstretch in July 2002.

Pocono has not been known to put on a four-wide, hold your breath kind of a race like you'd see at Talladega, but I disagree with most that say that it hosts two of the most boring races of the year. This past weekend's Pocono 500, in my opinion, wasn't that bad of a race. Passing is always tough at Pocono, as it is at any other flat track, but the racing wasn't too bad. The new patch of asphalt in turn 3 helped make for some hairy situations, and made driving around the final of the three turns interesting.

Every flat track on the Sprint Cup schedule has boring racing. Even the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard has had its share of snoozers. But to say that Pocono is the worst is merely nit-picking on the independently-owned race track. Heck, even the banked tracks have had some less-than-stellar racing so far this season (see Texas Motor Speedway and Dover Int'l Speedway).

For many, many years now people have called for the Mattioli's to cut back the distance of their two Cup dates from 500 miles to 400 miles. This would give the fans something to gripe about, as they would probably pay the same amount for their ticket to watch 100 less miles of racing. That wouldn't make any sense, would it?

The track was last paved for the 1996 season, and with the track in an area that gets harsh winters, cracks in the pavement only get worse each year. The patch in turn 3 was done to correct cracking that Mattioli noticed following last August's Cup race. It's only a matter of time before the track has to be repaved.

What better time than now, especially with Bruton Smith possibly buying the track? Even though the Mattioli's are very content with their ownership, they certainly have to consider the complaints.

Two possible suggestions I would give would be to repave the track and progressive-bank the three turns. This would help the passing issue and hopefully provide for some side-by-side racing. My second suggestion would be to bank all three corners at 25 degrees and put on a restrictor plate. With turn 3 banked at 25 degrees the cars would be hitting 220 mph into turn 1. The Auto Club Speedway (California) was rumored to bank their track and put the plates on to make the track unique and I think if Pocono were to do the same; it would certainly put Pocono in the very unique category.

Then maybe people would stop complaining about 500 miles of racing at Pocono.