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Tucson Speedway

Fun and sun are the two ingredients that make Tucson Speedway, a three-eighths-mile asphalt oval located at the

Pima County Fairgrounds south of Tucson, Arizona, a popular destination for NASCAR-sanctioned racing with a schedule that starts in January and then runs from March to November.

“It’s pretty much predictable that we are going to have 352 sunny days a year,” said John Lashley, who has managed Tucson Speedway since 2012. “When we are racing here, people are warm – the fans are warm, the drivers are warm. You’ve got a happy crew chief because he’s warm. All in all, it really is the sun. It’s why I moved to Tucson – to get warm.”

Tucson Speedway is the only track in the state that’s part of the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series.

“My goal is to provide a racing platform for the people in the state of Arizona and surrounding areas,” Lashley noted.

TUCSON’S REGULAR SEASON OPENER WILL BE RUN ON SATURDAY, MARCH 12

STORIED HISTORY

BUILT AS A DIRT TRACK IN 1968, THE

fairgrounds facility was leased in 1990 by International Speedway Corp., which is now owned by NASCAR, and the race track was paved in 1992. It hosted the second NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race – won by Ron Hornaday Jr. – on April 8, 1995, and was home to the televised Winter Heat Series, which introduced several future NASCAR stars including Kurt Busch, Greg Biffle and Matt Crafton.

REFURBISHED

“NASCAR LEFT IN 1999 AND THE TRACK

was leased to a variety of people and many of them were underfunded or didn’t have a longterm vision of what the track might be,” Lashley explained. “When I got the track, which was in 2012, the weeds were three-feet tall. There were cracks in the banked corners. We started from the rooftops. We redid the whole place from the rooftops to the track surface. It was a big project.”

THE CHILLY WILLY

TUCSON SPEEDWAY OPENED ITS 2022

season in January with a three-day event known as the Chilly Willy. “Chilly Willy is our track mascot. Some people think he’s a cucumber. Some people think he’s a string bean, but he’s really a saguaro cactus,” Lashley said. “This marquee event is 150 laps on our threeeighths-mile track and it’s always a good race. Again, it’s because of the sun. No one else is racing in late January.”