Greenville-Pickens Speedway is being repaved in the corners where the track surface is falling apart as part of the latest improvements to the historic half-mile South Carolina oval under promoter Anthony Anders.
Repaving began on January 18th and will conclude by the end of the day on January 19th.
“The repaving process began today and will be finished tomorrow,” Anders told Race22.com on Wednesday night. “What we did is we milled 30 foot of the groove and fortunately you don’t have to mill everything. We just milled three and a half lanes of racing. So, turns one and two and three and four was starting to have some issues and I didn’t want the aggravation and hassle of racing with having to slow the program down 45 minutes at a time to make repairs.”
The repaving effort began after multiple issues in 2016 with the track surface coming apart, primarily in the corners.
“The track has been coming apart,” Anders remarked. “20 years ago, July of this year, that was the last time it was paved.”
This is the latest in a long list of improvements Anders has made, however Anders is still looking to do more work to upgrade and modernize the facility to make it more fan friendly as well as driver friendly.
“I’ve done a lot of improvements to it,” Anders commented. “Gave it a facelift. there are many other things that still need to be looked at but we’re trying to take care of the most important things for the fans and racers. We’re doing a lot of things as far as other activities as well.”
Anders is a racer himself, known most for winning the 2014 NASCAR Whelen All-American Series national championship as well as the 2012 Myrtle Beach 400 which was run in March 2013. As promoter at Greenville-Pickens Speedway, he also increased payouts at the track and attracted racers from outside South Carolina in hopes of restoring the track to its former glory.
“We’ve always had 15 cars pretty much,” Anders explained. “I’ve had a lot of people that have traveled in. Every week, we had someone come in. I only have seven Late Model races scheduled, twin races each, $2,000 to win each twin, $1,000 to second and $300 to start so it almost covers your tire bill. I don’t have but seven twins and every one is the first weekend of the month. I don’t have but one per month.”
In addition to Late Model Stock Car racing, Greenville-Pickens Speedway will host the NASCAR K&N Pro Series on April 8th and will host the Southeast Limited Late Model series on multiple occasions. The full 2017 schedule can be viewed here.
