Surrey looks into getting NASCAR

[GMasterAres]

I always had a negative viewpoint on NASCAR until I attended a Daytona 500. There's something about being there in the atmosphere that gets the heart pumping. It can be a lot of fun. I find it extremely boring on TV and the racing itself, not amazingly entertaining, but when you're _at_ the event it's something completely different.

Same like baseball. I hate it personally and never watch on TV but have attended a few games down in Seattle and it is completely different in person with some good friends. As for Surrey, again not really for or against and I think it _could_ work. Would be interesting either way.

As for F1, I think it is a bit of a leap to get that here in the Vancouver area.

I'll be honest I would be more for building a dedicated track for the simple reason that you can attract year-round events in that case. The issue with just using "downtown Surrey" for a race or "downtown Vancouver" in the case of past Indy events, is that it is just for that event. It brings an influx of people out for 3 days then that's it. Seems a bit crazy and a lot of effort for a small payback.

You get your own track though and suddenly you can do a lot more. Host a NASCAR event, an F1/Indy/Something else event, get a race bike event, host some amateur race events, even have a business move in to do driving training or like is done in Europe, host race days where kids can actually go and learn how to drive/race their cars and do it in a controlled environment instead of down Fraser Highway or Kingsway at night.

Tracks don't have to cost a crazy amount either. Is it cheap? Naw. But one of the most expensive tracks in the F1 circuit at Shanghai cost $300 million so that's your roof. Many tracks are under $150 million.

How much is that roof at BC Place costing us again?

So how about, run an event 2 or 3 years in a row in downtown Surrey converting the road to a track for a cheap cost (cheaper than a dedicated track), save up some of the profits, then in 3-5 years construct a dedicated track for the region out near Cloverdale or something. The difficulty would be finding land outside the ALR where one could be constructed and noise would pull out the NIMBYs even though most tracks around the world have noise restrictions plus buffers reduce noise considerably, but who knows. One can dream I guess.

[invisibleairwaves]

There's plenty of non-ALR land near Cloverdale that could hold a dedicated track. It's just a question of whether there's enough demand to make it worthwhile. I'm not convinced that there is.

[dleung]

fits in more with my vision of Omaha or Kansas City, than metro Vancouver...