Speedway Recovers From Hurricane Hit

Maybe it was the rain, washing away the scars of Hurricane Wilma, but looking around Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday, it was difficult to believe that less than four weeks ago, 20 tons of steel was flying around, ripping apart everything in its way.

Some say there was a tornado mixed in with the big blow, but four five-ton steel structures used as team hospitality suites were ripped from their moorings, in turn tearing out 13 light poles, several hundred grandstand seats and a stretch of catch fencing on the front straightaway.

“If the suites hadn’t broken loose, the track might have escaped with little or no damage,” said Curtis Gray, speedway president, who weathered the Oct. 24 storm in his second-floor office of the track administration building.

“As it is, look around and our crews did such a fantastic job that you can’t tell we were in trouble. All the light towers have been replaced, new seats -- or rather, pre-owned seats -- and new fencing are ready for Sunday’s race.”

Homestead-Miami, with 65,000 seats surrounding a 1.5-mile oval half an hour’s drive southwest of Miami on the way to the Florida Keys, will be the site of the final weekend of NASCAR’s elite Chase for the Nextel Cup in which Tony Stewart is expected to clinch the $5-million champion’s payout in Sunday’s Ford 400.

The replacement seats were brought in from the now-closed Nazareth (Pa.) Speedway.

“Our seats are yellow and the ones from Nazareth are silver, but they fit our seat structure perfectly,” Gray said.

International Speedway Corp., which operates the 600-acre Homestead-Miami Speedway that is owned by the city of Homestead, brought in work crews from its sister tracks in Daytona Beach, Fla., and Talladega, Ala., to help in the cleanup and restoration work.

“The most difficult part was getting the workers here every day,” Gray said. “There was no electricity in the area. We had generators at the track, but most of the gas stations on the way to the track had no way to pump their gas. And the ones that had generators had lines a mile long.”

Gray, who lives in Key Largo, said he chose to remain in his office during the storm because “this might be the safest and sturdiest place in South Florida to sit out a hurricane. This place was built in 1995, three years after Hurricane Andrew all but wiped Homestead off the map, and because of that we have the most stringent hurricane codes of anyplace in the county.”

The track actually was built because of Hurricane Andrew. With nearly all of the mobile homes that surrounded Homestead Air Reserve Base blown away, city and county officials sought a way to tell the public that Homestead was still alive and kicking. One idea was to build a racetrack, so longtime Miami racing promoter Ralph Sanchez was brought in to create a new facility.

The result, a nearly $60-million project on a former potato patch, opened as Homestead-Miami Speedway with a NASCAR Busch series race in November 1995.

In 1999, Stewart won the track’s first Cup race, but on a much different track. Originally it was flat, built to resemble a smaller Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

After most races took on a boring follow-the-leader pattern, the track was rebuilt, at a cost of $12 million, with 18- to 30-degree variable banking in the corners, designed to give drivers more passing opportunities.

Stewart, who needs only to finish ninth or better Sunday night to win the championship, finished fourth last year, one position ahead of Kurt Busch, whose fifth place gave him the Nextel Cup crown.

“I enjoyed it when it was flat, obviously, and I enjoy it now when it’s banked,” Stewart said. “It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me what kind of a track configuration or surface we race on. We all have to race on the same track, so what difference does it make?”

With five wins, three poles, 16 top-five and 25 top-10 finishes, Stewart is within a few laps of what seems likely to be his second Cup championship. He won in 2002, a season during which he punched a photographer, fought with his crew, was fined $50,000 by his sponsor and finished the season on NASCAR probation.

Asked how this season, during which he has performed without incident, differed from 2002, he replied, “Why do you keep bringing that back up? That was three years ago. I’m just happy that that’s behind me and I’m moving onto 2005.... For the record, I’m about 15 pounds heavier and I’ve got highlights in my hair.”

Kenny Wallace, who filled in for the suspended Kurt Busch last week at Phoenix, was rewarded for his 16th-place finish by getting the ride in Jack Roush’s No. 97 Ford Taurus again this week.

“My goal this week is a top-10,” said Wallace, 42, whose older brother Rusty is making what he says is his final NASCAR race Sunday after 25 seasons.

A ceremony involving Busch’s championship flag was canceled after he was suspended by Roush Racing for inappropriate conduct when stopped for reckless driving last Friday near Phoenix International Raceway.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Ford 400

The final race of the NASCAR season with the Chase for the Nextel Cup still in the balance:

Site: Homestead, Fla.

* Schedule: Today, qualifying (Speed Channel, 10 a.m.); Sunday, race

(Ch. 4, 1 p.m.).

* Track: Homestead-Miami Speedway (oval, 1.5 miles, 18-20 degrees banking in turns).

* Race distance: 400 miles, 267 laps.

* At stake: Four drivers are mathematically alive in the championship chase entering this weekend’s season finale. Tony Stewart has a 52-point lead over Jimmie Johnson and 87 over Carl Edwards. Greg Biffle is fourth, 102 points behind Stewart.

Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times