Texas Motor Speedway makes big changes to make racing experience more fan-friendly

Last year Texas Motor Speedway had seats removed on the front stretch and replaced it with the Busch Restart Bar, which is already sold out for this year’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500.

Now the track is following that up by tearing up the seating just beneath the Speedway Club in Turn 1 and turning that into the Turn 1 Terrace.

Construction of the new area has already begun. It will be an 11,600-square foot deck with 2,000 seats in front of it and will debut for this year’s spring race. The area will be open for Speedway Club members as well as race fans who purchase the Raceday U ticket package.

The track has had a Raceday U event in the past but it was in a tent outside the TMS bowl with drivers participating in question-and-answer sessions. The terrace won’t be completely done until after the spring race as fans who purchase tickets will have access to the food and beverages on the fourth floor of the Speedway Club for the March race.

“We’re seeing this being the kind of thing ticket buyers want to experience when they go to stadiums and arenas,” Texas Motor Speedway president Eddie Gossage said. “It’s a vision of Marcus Smith, our CEO, and it really started with the Busch Restart Bar last year. It was a big hit. It’s going to have a completely different type of feel to it than any other place in the speedway. It’s just another part of No Limits Next, which is really all about modernizing the speedway so fans have a variety of places to go.”

Dixon ready to defend

Defending NTT IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon has won the series title five times, just two behind the all-time mark of seven by A.J. Foyt.

One thing Dixon hasn’t been able to do though is defend his title. He’s hoping that changes this year as the series gets ready to being March 10 in Florida.

“For us that’s goal No. 1, to try and win that sixth championship and go back-to-back,” said Dixon, who has won at TMS three times in his career, including the 2018 race. “A.J.’s a little up the road with seven championships. I don’t know but for whatever reason five seems like much more of a milestone for me. Five isn’t that much more than four but I felt like I put myself in a different category.”

Home at TMS

While there are tons of drivers who have driven in a lot more races at TMS than Erik Jones, few have had the kind of success that the 22-year-old has had in his brief history at the track.

Jones has won four times in TMS and led 617 total laps, which is already 12th best of all drivers at the track. Jones, who had his high school graduation ceremony before a trucks race at the track in 2014, has made just 14 starts at TMS.

“It was a surprise for me,” Jones said of his TMS success. “It was the first 1.5 mile I ever did in trucks. It went pretty terrible [11th in the trucks race]. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Texas at first. We came back the next time and that was when we won our first Xfinity Series race [in 2015]. Ever since then it’s just clicked. I felt like I had such a good idea of what I needed at Texas.”