We visited Cherokee Speedway last Saturday night and discovered some interesting features of dirt racing...
All of the people at Cherokee Speedway welcomed us and were very accomodating. Lennie Buff and his son Seth, run things at this track and believe that taking care of the fans and competitors is the way to grow the track.
Cherokee is a track that was shortened a few years ago from a large 1/2 mile to a large 3/8 mile track. What was strange to see is the start finish line being near the entry to turn one.
When they shortened the track, the owners moved turns one and two towards turns three and four. This put the original flag stand (it was not moved during this change) very close to the entry to the first turn.
So, to win in a close race, you must go full throttle into turn one and not lift until the very last minute. Needless to say, the racing was exciting. What we did see was a lot of single lane racing.
Something we are evaluating is the condition where there is one groove and at Cherokee it was at the top, no berm, just fast at the top. When a faster car tried to pass low, just under the top groove, it lost momentum and never quite made the pass.
At this track, running the bottom does not work at all. So we saw plenty of high groove racing and less passing. We saw a similiar situation at Carolina Speedway and we will begin investigating solutions whereby a track can reconfigure the turns to create multi-groove racing. Stay tuned.