The business of building a race track in the modern era

For some time, across the way from the decades-old 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway oval, there’s been a fence covered in black tarps. Friends in NASCAR told me they’d passed it countless times without paying any mind, thinking it was just construction. But had they looked, they would’ve caught a glimpse of a hint peeking over the fabric: the corner of a race track. 

That hidden track is Ten Tenths Motor Club, a new facility designed to serve a completely different purpose from its larger, sibling track on the other side of the street. Instead of the spectator-oriented NASCAR track that is Charlotte, Ten Tenths will be a car-centric country club — an idea that Marcus Smith, the CEO of NASCAR track-operating giant Speedway Motorsports, said has been a decade in the making.