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AVONDALE, Ariz. — There are no plans in place at this time for major changes to Phoenix International Raceway, but track president Bryan Sperber admits, “everybody loves a good rumor.”
“No decision has been made about what we’re going to do,” Sperber told NASCAR.com on Friday, the first day of track activity for this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR XFINITY Series races. “We’re evaluating a lot of different options. Once a decision has been made, then we’re going to scream it from the mountaintops. Everybody will know, believe me.”
During Friday’s opening Sprint Cup practice, NASCAR on FOX lead announcer Mike Joy said, “the rumor now is that ISC is going to take and flip-flop this track as has been done at Atlanta and Darlington.”
The change would be made, Joy said, because “these (frontstretch) seats face south which means you are sunbaked all day long. So there is a possibility of making this (backstretch) the frontstretch with new seats, new suites, a new control tower.”
Phoenix is one of 12 facilities owned by International Speedway Corp., and those tracks host 19 of the 36 points races on the current Sprint Cup Series schedule. Phoenix, a 1-mile layout, hosts two of those events.
The facility opened in 1964 but did not host a NASCAR premier series race until 1988. Grandstand seating capacity is listed at 50,000. The last major renovation at the facility came in 2011 when the racing surface was repaved and the layout reconfigured.
The process of requesting funding for facility upgrades begins with the determination of what those projects are “just to get a rough order of magnitude of what those costs would be, and then start to put a business case together around all of that,” said Sperber, who has been steering the ship at PIR since 2002.
“Then when we feel satisfied, when the team at ISC that we are working with also, collectively we feel satisfied that yes, this makes sense, this fits in with the parameters where the company could potentially feel comfortable green-lighting it, then we would take it to senior management and ultimately to the board for hopefully approval.”
At this time, he said, no such plan for upgrades had been submitted to ISC officials. “I hope he (Joy) is right, but we’re a long ways away from me making any kind of announcements about anything.”
Sperber acknowledged that his list of potential upgrades for the facility is a long one. Upgrading the fan experience and how fans interact with the venue is priority one.
“It’s no secret that we are in a market where there are a lot of new stadiums … newer venues,” he said. “Right on par with that, I think, would be to address the shortcomings of our ability to meet the needs of the industry and I would say that ranges from basically just about everything in the infield.”
While “serviceable” in its current form, he admitted “it is not by any means where it should be for a track in a big market like Phoenix, and at an important race track like Phoenix that has two Sprint Cup races, one of which is the semifinal race of the Chase.”
Daytona International Speedway just completed a $400 million upgrade, known as Daytona Rising, which saw the facility completely rebuilt into what officials there now describe as a motorsports stadium.
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That money previously earmarked for Phoenix improvements was subsequently redirected to the Daytona project, Sperber said, is incorrect.
“To my knowledge there was never any money … approved for Phoenix and I think I would have known,” he said.