Monday, March 22, 2010

Portland International Raceway

(UPDATED: May 19, 2012)

Portland is known as the City of Roses. One of the most beautiful roses is Portland International Raceway. This rose of a race track boasts 12 turns on a mostly flat race course. Beautiful scenery and a competitive race track makes this one of America's finest race courses. It is over 1.967 miles long and has hosted a variety of races since its opening in 1960. Because of some of the calamity that takes place in Turn 1, some racing series bypass the section known as the Festival Curves for lap one only.





--- Portland International Raceway ---

Have a look at this course now:

Portland International Raceway
^ from: absoluteastronomy.com - Portland International Raceway is a mostly flat race track that delivers insanity in a beautiful setting.

The front stretch gets you going full speed... before you got to slow her all the way down for the Festival Curves. Turns 1 and 2 are nearly identical sharp corners. Turn 3 sweeps nicely heading into Turn 4. Turns 4 and 4a are moderately smooth right-hand corners, but Turn 5 is a bit of a hard right turn. Turn 6 is about as sharp as Turn 5, only this is a left-hand turn. The turn radius increases heading into 6a. Turn 7 is a sharp right-hander Turns 8 through 9b make up the very long backstretch. Turn 8 is merely a high-speed left-hand kink followed by a gradually-sweeping section between Turn 9 and 9b. The lead foot thrill ends at Turns 10 and 11. It can be too easy to fly off the road at Turn 10 if you aren't careful. Turn 12 is somewhat hard, but crucial to get right if you want to blast down the front straight to complete a lap.

This is a video showcasing a lap of this beautiful facility:


^





This is one of my personal favorite courses. I actually wished NASCAR would return to Portland and race there as its Pacific Northwest hub. This would be psuedo home field for Vancouver, Washington's Greg Biffle. It was also a stop for the NASCAR Trucks back in the late 1990s. I think one of the different NASCAR touring series races at this course. Anyhow, Portland International Raceway. GREAT race course! I'd love to see various series return to racing there.

Thank you for reading!

"Like" me on Facebook, Follow JBS, and/or Contact Me via E-Mail!
Subscribe to John's Blog Space (JBS) Subscribe to John's Shop Space (JSS) Subscribe to John's Gran Turismo Space (JGTS)

No comments:

Post a Comment