Full Throttle

The expansion of NASCAR into a national organization has prompted some North Carolina lawmakers to back a taxpayer-funded test track.

State lawmakers want to spend millions of dollars to protect North Carolina’s status as the hub of stock car racing. They are pushing for a $50 million test track and research complex in the Charlotte area that would allow drivers to remain close to home. Virtually all NASCAR teams are based in the area.

But the sanctioning body limits the number of times drivers can practice on a sanctioned track, such as Lowe’s Motor Speedway outside Charlotte. Big time stock car racing is a $1.5 billion industry that employs 10,000 people in the state, supporters said. “This is an industry that a lot of states are really showing a lot of interest in right now,” said House Co-Speaker Jim Black.

Gov. Mike Easley is proposing $15 million be included in the 2004-05 budget for a North Carolina Motorsports Testing and Research Complex.

The growth and popularity of motorsports has led to increased competition from other states in this sector,” the governor said in a letter this week to a joint legislative committee on economic development. “We must invest now to ensure that this industry keeps its home in North Carolina.

In South Carolina, Clemson University is building a 400-acre International Center for Automotive Research that “promises to make South Carolina a hub of the nation’s automotive and motorsports industry,” according to a university Web site.

Heavy-hitters including BMW, Microsoft and Michelin North America are partnering with Clemson on the roughly $140 million project. The campus will include a graduate engineering program, research and testing facilities, and other amenities.

Virginia also is working to boost auto racing in that state, said Humpy Wheeler, president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

He said NASCAR has “nationalized” itself, leading to increased competition for the industry.

“North Carolina is not the center of NASCAR from a geographical standpoint like it originally was,” he said.

Even so, about 300 race teams - NASCAR and otherwise - are located within 60 miles of Charlotte, and most are within 35 miles, he said.

Wheeler said several counties around Charlotte could land the track. Acreage would likely be donated and supporters are looking for public money to build the complex.

The complex would include four tracks and probably include Formula One and other racing entities, proponents said.

Racing teams say the most pressing need for North Carolina is to build a test track, according to Michael Almond, president and chief executive officer of the 16-county Charlotte Regional Partnership, an economic development group leading the track effort.

He added that the track could eventually wean itself off public financing.

“We would like to make a pre-emptive move,” Almond said. “We want to make sure we are doing everything possible to have the infrastructure so they stay here.”

Mike Schmaltz, a spokesman for Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Ky., said NASCAR teams practice a few days a week at the 1-mile trioval, which opened five years ago.

Ultimately, they want them to race there, too.

“Oh, we’d love to see it come our direction,” he said. “That’s sort of been our hope since we opened.”