Pocono Raceway
Pocono Raceway (2.5 miles, Intermediate / Superspeedway, Unique) in Long Pond, Pennsylvania
The track characteristics of the Pocono Raceway, which owes its name to the surrounding hills speaks, not really known for the stiff stock race. At 2.5 miles the trail is actually a super speedway, but can be considered more like Indianapolis: Long, but has too little banking in order to achieve higher cornering speeds. The Trioval has three completely different turns, each of the other circuits are modeled: Turn 1 with 14 ° banking resembles the defunct Trenton Speedway, Turn 2 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is borrowed. This curve with 8 ° elevation is also called "tunnel turn", because under it is the entrance to the infield. The tunnel-turn, which is difficult to drive as is regularly the scene of spectacular cross-post and wall contacts. Turn 3 is similar, with 6 ° of the Milwaukee Mile.
This characteristic is of course a compromise tuning cars, you can not in any of the three different curves lie perfectly on the road and that's probably also turn 2 so hard to control. Found by the low banking must also be a compromise between speed and downforce. Both the curves should be able to go fast, and a competitive top speed to find the very long straight. Actually, the speedway is therefore rather a challenge for the engineers and not so exciting for the fans who saw the race as many drivers like to cut to 400 miles.
For several years already they argue publicly and internally on the meaning and purpose of a second season on the Trioval race in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. On the plus side is probably the one hand, the good relationship with the Mattioli family, owners of one of the last independent Speedway in the Sprint Cup. Dover and Indy are the others, the last of SMI and ISC independent routes. On the other hand, just the little explored North American market for the eastern NASCAR is very interesting. A race around New York is just as attractive as the race at the Auto Club Speedway in nearby Hollywood. So it all depends sometimes get bored when its convenient location right.
Fortunately, the leaders of the Pocono Raceways now have at least the - long time ailing - Safety measures of the oval revised and massive improvement in safety under way, after two serious accidents involving Kasey Kahne and Elliott Sadler got 2010 as the back straight had its long-awaited outer catch fence, which the Oval is now completely fenced. In addition, installed on the inside of the back straight infamous one SAFER Barrier, which replaced the last nurmehr ridiculous highway guardrail. What is missing is the removal of the lawn at this point in favor of a tarmac run-off area. The impact of Sadler was also the hardest, the NASCAR record since the introduction of electronic black boxes to date in the racing accident research has!
