THORNBURG, VA – Mild weather has been helping the construction efforts at the Dominion Raceway motorsports complex just months ahead of their scheduled opener.
The 4/10-mile oval and the two mile road course have been paved and have already seen drivers take test laps on them and the focus have now shifted to the construction of the facilities in and around the track. Among those facilities – a three-story building which will feature a full service restaurant and bar, a suvenior shop, lounge, pedestrian bridge, suites for VIPs and media, race control, offices, a spotter’s stand and enough space for events like car auctions.
The ambitious design also calls for the construction of a state of the art video board which will show live action, replays and other fan-oriented things similar to what is done at minor league baseball ballparks.
Dominion Raceway is the dream of former Old Dominion Speedway owner Steve Britt, as well as Jerry Evans, and the day-to-day operations of the track will fall under Britt and the track’s general manger, Edwin Pardue. Pardue was also a staple at Old Dominion Speedway, which was located in Manassas, Virginia, where he was the track announcer for many years.
“I think one of the biggest successes we’ve had, you draw a plan up several years ago and so often, the finished product doesn’t look like the plan,” Pardue told Race22.com. “With the exception of a little angle here and a little change there, we’ve built exactly what the plans looks like two years ago ad exactly what we’ve talked about. When people get on the site, what really surprises them is how big the facility is. You have to realize, the oval track, the main building, all of that is in the infield of the two mile road course on the outside. The fact that what was planned is what was built, I think is a testament to the crew here.”
Dominion Raceway is located just off Interstate 95 in Thornburg, Virginia halfway between Richmond and Washington, DC. With the construction of the racetrack itself nearly complete, the track has already been able to host private tests and open tests which Pardue says they have received plenty of positive feedback from.
“We’ve had cars on the track three different times,” Pardue remarked. “We did our very first initial test with just two Late Models to make sure we were ready for primetime. Great reviews there. Then we had an open practice, 62 or 64 cars here. There were Late Models, Modifieds, Dominion Stocks, from Legends to Bandoleros, Mini-Mods and U-Cars. Somebody from every division that will run was here. Again, tested really well and really good thumbs up.
“It was a great practice for us also in that we got to get cars in so we could figure out our parking in and out. There are so many other things to the whole race program on other than just what goes on on track but how you get cars in and out. That part also tested really well. We had another group come, two cars leased the track and did a little practice and good feedback from those guys as well.”
The main thing Pardue emphasized is that the track, which features progressive banking in the corners from 12° at the bottom to 14° up top, will be multi-grooved and feature plenty of side-by-side racing as it takes more rubber.
“The one thing we hear from everybody is it’s fast,” Pardue explained. “Everybody feels like it will turn into a multi-groove racetrack. Right now, everybody’s working the bottom but we’ve seen some other guys working higher up. You’ve got plenty of racetrack up on the high side to work with. The consensus was, yes it will be fast but it will also develop, as the track develops and gets some rubber into it, into a real multi-groove racetrack so you should see guys going side-by-side all the way around the whole track.”
The Dominion Raceway complex is not just big in size but in infrasturcture as well. For several months, rumors circulated about the fate of the speedway on social media when progress was not visible to the naked eye. Britt, who has spent many years in the construction industry, and Pardue say that was because of the infrastructure work being done.
“The reality is, this is a very difficult thing to do,” Britt explained. “Most don’t make it so there’s skepticism in the marketplace anyway for new tracks in general because a lot of people are passionate about doing it and they get started but they can’t get it to the finish line. It’s been a little bit of a background piece for me. I was in the construction business as you know. I’ve done some development. I’ve done some design. I’ve done some engineering. And having promoted at Old Dominion Speedway, I knew kind of what to do and so it was that experience level that I think created a footprint for what we did here.
“Then it was understanding the absolute brutal process of doing this that is going to carry us forward and see us to the finish line because it is an enormous undertaking. Miles, literally miles and miles and miles of pipe, over 500,000 cubic yards of dirt relocated. All that dirt, when it’s put in place, has to be compacted and place properly. Just the underground part of the thing is ridiculous and we still have miles and miles and miles of wire to still pull. You got to understand the process.”
Britt understood the frustrations over the apparent lack of progress from fans and drivers, many of whom expressed their frustrations on social media. However, the skepticism dwindled during the spring and summer months in 2015 as the visible progress was finally made.
“If I hadn’t been in the construction business, I would, and a lot of the fans that are watching aren’t in the construction business, it looks like should be able to be done very quickly but it takes a tremendous amount of time and patience. And you have to be very opportunistic as you do it because you’re battling weather and government agencies and everything else. It’s a very hard thing to undertake. It’s harder than I thought it would be but the result is also much better than the plans show.”
Pardue compared the infrastructure to the construction of a small city.
“The part that people don’t see, and I don’t have a construction background and I’ve learned a lot being here,” Pardue explained. “The amount of work that occurred underground, before anything started going on top of the ground, is extensive. We’ve basically been in the process of building a small city here so, you talk about stormwater and sewage and electric and conduits. All this stuff that occurred underground. What would happen is that the crew would come in here and work, they’d dig a half mile of trench, they’d lay pipe for stormwater, for whatever, cover it back up. So, if somebody was here and looked, went away and came back a week and a half later and say ‘well, I don’t see anything’s happened’, they didn’t see all the stuff that went on underground and I understand that.
“Once we started going vertical, once the frame started going up on the building, once you started to see, then it’s huge. But the amount of infrastructure underground before anything could start going up is mind-boggling.”
“I mean, it’s crazy, we thought it was a pretty cool thing on a piece of paper but in life, it’s actually much much better so that’s why we’re going to make it,” Britt remarked. “It’s really a history being in that business and doing it for about 20 years prior to starting this project. That’s what I attribute to it anyway.”
As construction crews continue working through the winter months, mild temperatures this winter are allowing crews to make progress. While there had been plenty of progress taking place over the last two years, construction had also been slowed last winter due to numerous snowstorms and brutally cold temperatures – the opposite of this winter to-date.
“We’ll never get back the days that we lost last Winter and through the Spring but this Fall has been a blessing,” Pardue remarked. “It’s allowed us to, we’ve got the base coat now down on the full road course. That was great. We couldn’t have done that without the good weather. We’ve been able to get a lot of the areas finished and seeded and grass coming up so, hopefully a nice, mild winter, we have that part going. And then we’ve been able to get some testing in on the oval track that typically, the weekend before Thanksgiving and the first weekend of December, you’re not doing a whole lot of oval track testing in the Mid-Atlantic so that helped. What was good there is it let people know this is for real. People left that driver’s meeting, they left after that open test and they’re talking about the facility.”
People are talking about the track as well. To date, Dominion Raceway has 17,928 likes on Facebook. The much anticipated opening race will be held on Saturday, April 9, 2016.
