Pocono Raceway, Oval

Pocono Raceway lies in the Pocono Mountain resort area of northeastern Pennsylvania, near Long Pond, and remains one of the most distinctive venues in American motorsport. It was the project of Joe "Doc" Mattioli, a Philadelphia dentist who got drawn into the venture almost by accident after a chance airport encounter, and the track has stayed fiercely independent and family-run ever since. Ground was broken in 1965, an initial three-quarter-mile oval and drag strip opened in 1968, and the full 2.5-mile superspeedway was completed in the early 1970s. Its defining feature is a rounded triangular shape with three corners, each modelled on a different famous oval: Turn One borrows the 14-degree banking of the old Trenton Speedway, the Tunnel Turn at Turn Two echoes Indianapolis at 9 degrees, and the flat Turn Three at 6 degrees recalls the Milwaukee Mile. The wildly varied banking and long straights, the longest of which stretches some 3,740 feet, give rise to its nickname, the "Tricky Triangle," and demand compromise setups that no single corner suits perfectly. USAC and later CART IndyCars were early mainstays, NASCAR arrived in 1974 and soon ran two races a year, and only the personal support of Bill France Sr kept the financially shaky track alive through the 1970s. The Mattiolis later poured millions into continual upgrades, removing the old short oval and even installing one of the world's largest solar farms in 2010. IndyCar returned in 2013 but departed after a series of serious crashes, including the fatal accident of Justin Wilson in 2015. Run today by the third-generation Igdalsky and Mattioli family members, Pocono hosts a major NASCAR race each July.

Operated by: Mattioli Family