Superspeedway
In North American motorsports, a Superspeedway is a race track over one mile (1.6 kilometers) in length. This term is used to differentiate these tracks from short tracks. The first superspeedway built for NASCAR racing was Darlington Raceway at Darlington, South Carolina, which is slightly less than a mile and a half long (1.366 mi.) and of a unique, asymmetrical design. The most famous superspeedway from a NASCAR standpoint is undoubtedly Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, built as a replacement for a course which consisted of a drive down the town's main street and back up its famous beach. Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana is a superspeedway that existed far before the term was ever coined. Like Daytona, it is two and a half miles (approximately 4 kilometers) long, but its corners are less steeply banked, meaning that the stock cars used in NASCAR (which now races at both venues) attain somewhat lower speeds than they otherwise could there. This allows the NASCAR race at "Indy to be run without the use of carburetor restrictor plates like those used at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway at Talladega, Alabama, which is approximately two and two-thirds miles (4.20 kilometers) long.
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