A stream of cars evacuate Homestead, Fla., last week. Credit: AP

Homestead on track for Championship Weekend

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Homestead-Miami Speedway suffered "significant" damage Monday when Hurricane Wilma raced across Southern Florida, but track president Curtis Gray says it will not impact NASCAR's season finale Ford Championship Weekend.

In fact Gray -- who weathered the storm in his second floor office in the track's administration building behind the frontstretch -- said the timing of the latest storm in a busy Florida hurricane season hurts worse than the actual damage.

He said a financial estimate of damages has not been completed.

CHASE FOR THE NEXTEL CUP •   Inside the Chase •   Official Standings

"Everything considered, there's not that much damage," Gray said. "But the damage is significant because we're only three weeks out from race week -- but we'll be ready for the races."

The season closers for the Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series, the Ford 400, 300 and 200 respectively, are scheduled under the lights on the 1.5-mile speedway Nov. 18-20.

"It's a hiccup, but Ford Championship Weekend will absolutely go on," Gray said. "It will be bigger and better than ever, and the people that come will not even know that a hurricane came through here."

Gray said he could not confirm that a tornado had struck the speedway, which sits on 600 acres at the end of the Florida Turnpike, outside Florida City at the head of the Florida Keys; but he said winds of more than 100 mph were definitely clocked in the speedway area.

At some point during the storm, Gray said that 50 50-person "garage suites" -- steel-framed canvas structures that sit atop the Nextel Cup and Busch Series garages -- were completely ripped off the top of the building.

"The only thing left of our garage suites is the seats themselves," Gray said. "Whatever it was -- a hurricane or a small tornado -- it was powerful when it lifted those garage suites off their foundation.

"We were ready for the loss of some canvas, but never in our wildest imagination did we think we would lose the entire structure. The damage that this structure did to the speedway was impressive."

The suites were blown across the track's pit road, destroying an extensive amount of chain-link fence and taking down 12 light poles and the reflective "Mirtran" fixtures that light the 1.5-mile speedway's frontstretch.

The suite structures tore down "about 50 yards of catch fencing" on the grandstand side of the frontstretch and damaged "about 40 rows" in the 65,000-seat grandstand, in a slightly lesser width due to the catchfence arresting the debris' progress.

Gray said a piece of the suite structure was blown over the top of the grandstands, ripping a railing from the front of the fifth and sixth floor suites on the track's frontstretch and also tearing off a 13th light pole from atop the grandstands.

"Obviously, we're upset that there was any damage at all," Gray said. "But our main building, which handles all the suites and operations, NASCAR's race control area and the rest of the grandstands is all fine, structurally."

Gray said that building codes in South Florida, particularly Homestead, which was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in August 1992, aided the speedway's ability to withstand Wilma's fury. The track opened in 1995.

"Everything at the speedway was built after Hurricane Andrew," Gray said. "So (it was subject to) some of the most stringent hurricane codes of any speedway in the country, including the new light poles."

Gray said if not for the impact of the unforeseen flying structure, "the speedway would have been fine."

Speedway operator International Speedway Corporation has mobilized crews -- Gray said about 20 personnel -- from its sister facilities, Daytona International Speedway and TalladegaSuperspeedway, to aid in the rebuild.

"The nice thing about it, if there is a nice thing about it, is that we have great resources at ISC," Gray said. "We're pulling in operations teams from Daytona and Talladega and these are experts in their field.

"They're bringing a lot of their equipment and resources down, so in that respect we'll have a lot of experts down here working on putting the facility back together."

Gray said crews were already at work building replacement light poles and fixtures, the track has been in contact with a tenting contractor to completely replace the suite structures and decisions are expected "within a few hours" on whether to transport seats formerly used at Nazareth (Pa.) Speedway, another ISC facility, or to purchase replacements.

Impacting the process to some degree is Homestead city manager Curt Ivey's projection that it may take a week for power to be restored to the area surrounding the speedway. Still, Gray said ISC had taken that into account.

"If Florida Power & Light can get power to Homestead sooner than that, that would be wonderful," Gray said. "We have our speedway generator and that is one thing that is coming from Daytona, more generators.

"We're bringing in some trucks, a bucket truck to get to the higher areas and equipment to cut and bend steel, 1,000 gallons of fuel and also diesel fuel because everything will be running off generators."

Gray said Tuesday afternoon the actual work schedule was being assessed, but that he is so optimistic about the repairs that he's hoping to have some testing between now and one week before the race.

"Once we get a lot of this debris lifted off the fencing and we can get to the damaged areas, we can assess the timing of this a little better," Gray said. "But I can tell you that those projects have already started."

Gray said the damaged catchfence was the only thing preventing the racetrack from being used in daylight hours.

He said the only other significant damage was a fire/rescue office trailer that was completely destroyed and two other trailers used by ISC's Americrown souvenir and catering division that were damaged.

"Obviously, our first priority is to have everything back together by Nov. 18 -- the Ford 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series finale," Gray said. "But before that we'd like to do some testing, so we're looking for some windows of opportunity between these projects.

"But one of the things that might slow down testing or preclude us from doing any testing is putting the pit road light poles back into place."