Tiny Martinsville holds on, but for how much longer?

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- It comes rising out of the hillside like some ancient beast, the sun glinting off aluminum grandstands, austere facilities and the pastoral landscape beyond. Martinsville Speedway is the oldest track used by the Nextel Cup circuit, a standard on the tour since its construction in 1949. Compared to most other racetracks in NASCAR, the place is a dinosaur.

And we all know what happens to dinosaurs. They go extinct.

That's not to say that somebody is going to pull the plug on Sunday, which would considerably complicate the running of the Goody's Cool Orange 500. But it's coming. There are too many rumblings out of places like Denver and Seattle and Daytona Beach, too few traditional tracks remaining to place in the crosshairs, too few slots on the calendar. There are too many reasons to doubt whether one or both of Martinsville's two race weekends will survive the next 10 years.

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There are plenty of things to like about Martinsville, from the unfailingly courteous staff to the springtime South Virginia scenery to the product on the racetrack. It's hard to dislike a speedway where fans line a fence to cheer drivers as they're carted to the garage from the outlying motorhome lot. The place is so welcomingly unpretentious that its most renowned delicacy is a hot dog sporting a deep, almost radioactive shade of pink.

But Martinsville has too much working against it. It's an hour from anywhere, leading some team sponsors to pass on holding standard racetrack hospitality events in favor of bigger tracks in bigger markets in upcoming weeks. Good luck finding an asphalt parking lot. It does well at the ticket window, and could sell out with a good walk-up crowd. But this isn't Bristol, its sister short track, with 100,000 more seats and tickets so scarce they're fought over in divorce hearings.

Its position as one of only three short tracks on the Nextel Cup schedule keeps it viable. But of the new facilities being planned by parent company International Speedway Corp. -- run by members of the same France family that owns NASCAR -- at least one is targeted as a short track. The day all the bureaucratic hassles are overcome in Denver or New York or wherever and a bulldozer breaks ground, the clock begins ticking on Martinsville. Right now, it's a racetrack being saved by red tape.

Of course, things could change. ISC, which bought Martinsville in the great realignment shuffle of 2004 -- and in the process, busted the track-perpetuated myth that the place somehow had 85,000 seats -- could dump all kinds of money into it. That's what it did to Darlington Raceway, which lost the Southern 500 but now has lights, a new grandstand, more improvements on the way and a relatively secure future.

But there are no signs that any of that will happen here. With North Wilkesboro gone, Rockingham shuttered and Darlington down to one race, Martinsville stands as the final, vulnerable outpost among NASCAR's traditional tracks. Eventually, bond issues and location questions and legislative opposition will be overcome, and newer tracks will open near bigger cities. And when that happens, their dates will come from this little speedway off U.S. Highway 220.

It's a sad reality. Martinsville officials have done a fine job ensuring good action on the racetrack and putting people in the seats, but there are simply too many factors beyond their control. Which is why one day, the train chugging beyond the backstretch grandstand may carry NASCAR out of town for good.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.