Penske's California Speedway Moving Ahead

04/26/96

Roger Penske hosted a media tour of the construction site for his new Michigan Speedway look-alike race track, California Speedway the day before the Long Beach Grand Prix. Roger proclaimed big happenings for the track which saw its stock offering go through the roof two weeks ago starting off on NASDAQ at $24.00 and zooming to $42.00 per share in five days. The facts: Banking will be 14 degrees.11 degrees in the tri-oval and 3 degrees for the backstretch. It is locates 45 miles from downtown L.A. and there are 17.5 million people in the marketing area. Point man...Penske's "go-to" guy is personable Les Richter late of NASCAR and Riverside International Raceway. There is parking for 33,000 cars and access roads to every direction and once you park Disneyland-like trams will ferry you to the track gates. Next April Rusty Wallace will christen the track in a Ford T-Bird race car which is sponsored by Miller Beer and owned by "the Captain" who introduced a corp of Indy car drivers on hand for the event as well as the Long Beach G.P.

Bill Maloney -- The Auto Channel