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Tony Stewart wins KC Sprint Cup race. AP/O. Wagner.
It was a picture-perfect day Sunday for auto racing – or about anything outdoors you might want to do – and two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart took full advantage of the conditions to create his own personal Kodak moment.
Before a cheering, capacity crowd estimated at around 100,000 at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Stewart withstood a late charge by runner-up Jeff Gordon to take the checkered flag and the win in the Price Chopper 400, the third event in the 10-race NASCAR Chase for the Cup.
Stewart, who drove the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet for years with Joe Gibbs Racing, is in his first year in the dual role of team owner and lead driver for the newly formed Stewart-Haas Racing team. The win at this year’s Sprint Cup event at Kansas Speedway is Stewart’s second at Kansas in the nine years the track has been opened, tying him with Gordon, who won the first two Cup events there in his No, 24 DuPont car in 2001 and 2002. Stewart won in 2006 while driving for Gibbs.
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NASCAR "Chase" race No. 3 at Kansas Speedway
Stewart and Gordon also hold the NASCAR Sprint Cup record for the most top 10 finishes at Kansas Speedway, with six each. Gordon leads in top five finishes at Kansas with five. The Kansas victory, Stewart’s fourth win of the 2009 NASCAR season, also enabled Stewart to move from fifth into fourth place in the Chase standings. He trails the leader, Mark Martin who along with Gordon drives for Hendrick Motorsports, by 67 points.
Stewart held off Gordon for the final 13 laps of the race. “We just kind of ran our pace,” Stewart told Randy Covitz of The Kansas City Star after the race. “When somebody starts running you down, it’s easy to overdrive your car trying to maintain gap, and you end up making it worse on yourself.”
The Chase for the Cup now moves to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.Calif., for race No. 4 in the Chase series.
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Kansas Speedway opened in 2001. AP/A. Warden.
Kansas Speedway: Need for speed on the Prairie
Although the facility did not officially open it gates for business until May 2001, the idea and plans to build a state-of-the-art race track in Greater Kansas City for big-time motorsports events began five years earlier.
Wanting to expand its race track operations and bring stock-car and open-wheel racing to fans in other parts of the country, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), owner 13 major auto race tracks around the country – including Daytona International Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway, the final stop in the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup – began exploring options and site locations in the mid-1990s to build a track that would attract fans and racing buffs in the Midwest. In 1997, a decision was made to locate a new ISC speedway facility in Western Wyandotte County in Kansas City, Kan., at the intersection of Interstates 70 and 435, about 15 miles west of downtown Kansas City, Mo.
Construction of the modern, new 1.5-mile, tri-oval Kansas motorsports venue, built on 1,300 acres and designed to accommodate all types of motor racing, began in May 1999. Around 600,000 dump trucks full of dirt was cleared to prepare the land for the construction of the race track. That is enough to fill both Arrowhead and Kaufman Stadiums.
Participants at the official groundbreaking celebration for what was first referred to as Project X, then Project 500 and, ultimately came to be called Kansas Speedway were then-NASCAR president, the late Bill France, Jr.; then-ISC President and Chief Executive Officer Jim France (now Chairman); then-Kansas Governor Bill Graves and Carol Marinovich, at the time Mayor of the Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., Unified Government.
Season ticket sales for the new motor speedway commenced in July 1999, two months after construction began. Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett purchased the first Fan P.A.S.S. (Preferred Access Speedway Seating), which allowed fans to secure the best available seat locations at the track. Additionally, all 32 luxury suites planned as part of the original track design were sold the first day they went on sale. As a result of the surprising high demand for suites, the ISC board of directors approved construction of an additional 36 suites, which increased the track attendance capacity from 75,000 to 82,000.
One year into the construction of Kansas Speedway, both the Indy Racing and NASCAR announced that they would schedule races for Kansas City in 2001 during the track’s inaugural season. NASCAR agreed to bring three races to the new Kansas racing venue in its first year: what at the time was a Craftsmen Truck Series race, a Busch Series race and a Winston Cup race.
Construction was completed in early 2001 at a cost of $260 million, and Kansas Speedway held its first race weekend in June 2001, hosting a NASCAR Winston West Series race and the ARCA RE/MAX BPU 200-mile event. The width of the 1.5-mile oval track surface is 55-feet across, with 15-degree banking in the four turns, 10.4 degrees in the front stretch and 5-degree banking in the back stretch. One and a quarter miles of the Kansas Speedway track is equipped with the innovative, new 40-inch-high Steel and Foam Energy Reduction System (SAFER) barrier, designed to increase driver safety. This is the longest length of any track with SAFER walls on the NASCAR or IRL circuits.
Chicago Speedway, also owned and operated by ISC, is another intermediate-length track that is very similar in architectural design to Kansas Speedway. Kansas and Chicago were built and opened at about the same time
HNTB and the DRL Group were the two principal architecture and engineering firms involved in the design and construction of Kansas Speedway. HNTB executed the overall master plan for the facility, including the track location, landscaping and construction of the 1.5-mile oval-track. DRL designed the grandstand area, luxury suites, 40 buildings on property and the 200-ft. Icon Tower, one of the signature features at Kansas Speedway, which contains digital signage and banners promoting track events at the speedway. Kansas City-Mo.-based Turner Construction Co. also had an integral role in the project.
In all, more than 2,000 people had a hand in creating and constructing the Kansas Speedway.
To provide race fans with good sight lines, HNTB lowered the track into a bowl, giving fans seated in the first 65 rows in the grandstand unimpeded views of all four turns as well as the back stretch. Another design feature unique to Kansas Speedway when it was built is the spacious garage area, which is 5- to 10-feet larger than at most tracks.
Jeff Gordon won the first NASCAR Winston Cup race held at Kansas Speedway in
September 2001. Gordon and Tony Stewart have each won two of the Winston/Sprint Cup races held at Kansas Speedway in the nine years the track has been opened.
Commercial development at Kansas Speedway and at properties immediately adjacent to the race track is expected to expand. Plans are in the works for a Hollywood-themed Casino that would be in the area overlooking Turn 2 at the speedway. If approved, the casino project would include a resort hotel in its second phase.
And a month ago, the ownership group of the Kansas City Wizards announced that the Major League Soccer team is pursuing plans to build a new 18,500-seat stadium on a site owned by Nebraska Furniture Mart near Kansas Speedway within the Village West retail area. The new soccer stadium is part of a larger proposal that includes a 600,000-square-foot office building that would house 4,000 new jobs to be created by Cerner Corp., one of Kansas City’s leading employers and a top national supplier of healthcare information technology solutions. Pending state and local government approvals, both projects would be completed in 2011.
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