Gateway Motorsports Park

History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway page on 21 September 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

St. Louis International Raceway Park was built in 1967 as a drag racing facility, and in 1985 a road course was constructed, featuring 2.2 miles (3.5 km) and 1.0 mi (1.6 km) configurations. In 1994, Chris Pook, promoter of the Grand Prix of Long Beach, acquired the facility, demolishing the existing tracks over the course of 1995–1996 for the construction of a new oval speedway.

World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (formerly Gateway International Raceway and Gateway Motorsports Park) is a motorsport race track in Madison, Illinois, just east of St. Louis, Missouri, United States, close to the Gateway Arch. It features a 1.25-mile (2 kilometer) oval used by the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series and IndyCar Series, a 1.6-mile (2.6 km) infield road course used by SCCA, Porsche Club of America and various car clubs, and quarter-mile drag strip that hosts an annual National Hot Rod Association event.

The first major event held at the facility was a CART series held on Saturday May 24, 1997, the day before the Indy Racing League's Indianapolis 500. Rather than scheduling a race directly opposite the Indy 500 (as they had done in 1996 with the U.S. 500), CART scheduled Gateway the day before to serve as their Memorial Day weekend open-wheel alternative without direct conflict. For 2000, the race was moved to the fall. In 2001, it was dropped from the CART series schedule, and switched alliances to the Indy Racing League. After mediocre attendance, the event was dropped altogether after 2003. It was later re-added to the schedule for 2017.

The facilities were owned by Dover Motorsports, a group that also owned what is now Memphis International Raceway, along with Dover International Speedway, and the Nashville Superspeedway. After being shuttered on November 3, 2010, it was announced on September 8, 2011 that the facility would be re-opened by St. Louis real estate developer and former Indy Lights driver Curtis Francois.

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