Texas Motor Speedway map
33.04° N · 97.28° W · Denton County · 1.5-mile quad-oval · opened 1997
Texas Motor Speedway is a 1.5-mile quad-oval sitting on open prairie in southern Denton County, just north of the Fort Worth city line at the crossing of I-35W and SH-114. It opened in 1997 and is one of the largest permanent seating venues in the United States.
The oval and its ring road fill the block between I-35W on the west and SH-114 on the north. Camping and parking take up most of the surrounding land.
Where it is and how to get there
The speedway is about 20 miles north of downtown Fort Worth on I-35W; the SH-114 interchange is the exit, and the track is visible from the freeway for the last few miles. From Denton it is roughly 15 miles south on the same road. From Dallas the usual line is I-35E north then SH-114 west through Roanoke, about 35 miles. DFW International Airport is around 20 miles southeast, most directly by SH-114.
The nearest towns are Roanoke, Justin, Northlake and Haslet, all small; there is no city grid around the track to absorb traffic, so a full race day loads everything onto two roads. Access to the property is by Lone Star Circle, the ring road that encircles the whole site, off SH-114 and the frontage roads of I-35W.
How the site is laid out
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| The quad-oval | A mile and a half around, with four distinct corners rather than two long ones; the front straight is bent outward, which is what makes it a quad-oval instead of a plain oval |
| Banking | Steeply banked corners — around 20 degrees in turns one and two and steeper still in three and four following the reconfiguration and repave carried out in 2017 |
| Main grandstand | Runs the length of the front straight on the west side, with the suites and the club tower rising behind it |
| Infield | Garages, pit lane, victory lane, media and team hospitality, plus infield camping, reached by a tunnel under the track |
| Road course | An infield circuit that joins part of the oval to a twisting section inside it, used for sports car and motorcycle racing |
| Video board | The large screen on the backstretch, installed in 2013 and among the biggest at any sports venue when it was built; visible from most of the grandstand |
| Dirt track | A separate dirt oval on the property, used for sprint car and truck racing on its own schedule |
| Camping and parking | Large outer lots and long-stay RV camping in the fields around the ring road, occupied for several days around a major weekend |
Racing here
The track was built as a mile-and-a-half intermediate oval, the format that dominated American stock car racing in the 1990s, and it has held NASCAR Cup Series racing every year since it opened. Open-wheel cars ran here for many seasons as well, often at night, and the combination of high banking and a wide surface produced some of the fastest laps on any oval in the country. The 2017 rebuild reduced the banking in turns one and two and laid new asphalt across the whole circuit, changing the racing line and slowing the pace of tyre wear.
Around the speedway
The stretch of I-35W below the track is the Alliance corridor: Fort Worth Alliance Airport, a rail intermodal terminal and a long run of distribution warehouses, with an outlet shopping centre at the next interchange south. It is one of the fastest-growing pieces of Tarrant and Denton counties, and the empty land that once surrounded the speedway is filling in from the south. Wise County begins a few miles west; Frisco and the northern suburbs are half an hour east on SH-114 and the Dallas North Tollway.
On a major race day the I-35W and SH-114 approaches run one-way traffic patterns set by the county and DPS.