Every track, past, present, and future, has a story to tell–a storied history with some legendary moments and legendary winners. Since its inception in 1949, 179 unique speedways and tracks have been featured on the NASCAR circuit across its many distinctive series. Today, only 53 of those still remain on the schedule across all of NASCAR’s divisions, while the others often waste away. Some get sold to real estate developers. They get turned into condos or a Walmart or a parking lot or a shopping mall. Others get left to ruin, a painful reminder of their former glory. And some get torn down in order to build a new short track, but never reach beyond the blueprint and/or good idea phase of planning.
For this new series, titled Forgotten Speedways, I thought that it would be interesting to take a look back at some of the tracks that were once mainstays on the NASCAR schedule at some level but have since, for one reason or another, been left off the schedule entirely to erode to Father Time. And, with NASCAR’s more recent interest in having a presence in the Nashville area, I thought it would be appropriate to kick off this series with the long-forgotten other Tennessee racetrack that was once exclusive to the Xfinity and Truck Series, Memphis Motorsports Park.
Memphis Motorsports Park opened in 1986 by founder Ed Gatlin in Millington, Tennessee, a suburb of the Memphis Metropolitan Area. The idea was to, across 400 acres of land, build a racing complex of sorts, consisting of a 0.83-mile dragstrip, a 1.7-mile road course, a dirt track, and a go-kart track. Under this initial leadership, the park hosted the NHRA and the IHRA for their Midsouth Nationals racing events, which were held from 1988 to 2009.
But the property we’re looking specifically at today is the D-shaped oval purpose-built to attract NASCAR and their top 3 nationally touring divisions. Ground for the track broke in 1997, under the new ownership of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach. However, in July of 1998, Dover Motorsports acquired the facility and held ownership of the track through the 2010 season. Beginning in ’98, the track hosted its first sanctioned NASCAR races, hosting the then-NASCAR Busch and Craftsman Truck Series. The track also hosted ARCA events sporadically throughout its tenure.
After NASCAR held its final race at the track in 2009, ARCA continued to race at the facility until 2020. After NASCAR left, the property was sold to the now-defunct Palm Beach International Raceway. Now, the track is currently owned by IRG Sports and Entertainment Group.
The former NASCAR oval at Memphis Motorsports Park is a D-shaped short track oval, similar to the design of Richmond Raceway and Iowa Speedway. It measures in at 0.75 miles in length and consists of a worn and abrasive asphalt surface. The banking in the wide-sweeping corners is 11 degrees. Meanwhile, the backstretch is 3 degrees in banking while the frontstretch is barely steeper at 4 degrees. When the track was built, it was built on the land where the now-closed dirt track once sat. A new dirt track was later built on the site of the defunct go-kart track.
The track was an exclusive to the lower ranks of NASCAR as they never were able to secure a Cup Series date. Still, it made for a fun stand-alone weekend. The NASCAR Xfinity and Truck Series raced there typically in the fall, usually in the month of October, typically when the NASCAR Cup Series was racing at Atlanta.
Both ARCA and the Trucks hosted their first races there in the track’s inaugural season, 1998. The Xfinity Series was added to the weekend festivities in 1999. The second and third-tier series raced at MMP until 2010, their last races occurring in 2009. ARCA, meanwhile, returned in 2001 but only for a one-off. In 2017, Memphis Motorsports Park became a regular fixture on the ARCA Menards schedule until 2020.
After the 2020 season, the D-shaped over was shuttered. However, the drag strip continued to host IHRA races until 2023.
The list of winners at Memphis Motorsports Park reads like the who’s-who of NASCAR racing. The driver with the most wins there in the Xfinity Series at 2 is Kevin Harvick. Harvick won there in 2000 and then again during his 2006 championship campaign. Other former Busch/Nationwide winners include Carl Edwards, Clint Boyer, Jeff Green, Brad Keselowski, Randy LaJoie, Martin Truex Jr., among others.
In the truck garage, Ron Hornaday won there three times while Jack Sprague and Travis Kvapil both have two wins apiece. Other Truck Series winners were Greg Biffle, Bobby Hamilton, and Ted Musgrave.
Sadly, the track today has been left to ruin. Since the closure of the drag strip in 2022, the track was sold to IRG Sports and Entertainment. Currently, it sits abandoned. It has been taken over with overgrowth and brush, especially in the in-field. There is no word as to what plans are for the land. We only know that slowly, it is being demolished.
That does it for this entry of Forgotten Speedways, Daily Downforce readers. Do you remember Memphis Motorsports Park? It was a mainstay on the schedule when I was growing up and first getting into the sport. Would you like to see it make a comeback? And, if so, to what capacity? Is there room for another D-shaped short track oval in a modern NASCAR schedule? Let us know what you think! And, if you enjoyed this series and would like to suggest other tracks we can cover, let us know! Until next time, stay awesome.
