Mark Martin Opens Quarter Midget Track In New Smyrna Beach

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. --NASCAR Winston Cup driver Mark Martin is branching out to a new venture in his racing career, becoming a track promoter. Martin has been working all summer on the construction of a brand new quarter-midget track located in the infield of New Smyrna Speedway in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.

The inspiration for the project was Martin's eight-year-old son Matt, who began racing a quarter-midget last year near Orlando, Fla. Martin wanted to have a track closer to home for many of the local kids.

"I started the project along with Robert Hart, who owns the New Smyrna track, and several of our friends in the community to help kids in the area be able to have a place to race," Martin said. "We wanted to provide an opportunity for local kids to get started in racing. We have received a lot of help from people in the community and local businesses that are also really excited to do something for the kids. We welcome any corporate sponsorship to help support this worthwhile investment.

The track will be a standard 1/20th-mile oval and will operate on Wednesday evenings. It will have QMA (Quarter Midget Association) sanctioning and a local club. The track will host six divisions each week, and each car will be equipped with a transponder for electronic scoring to minimize the delays between races. Since part of theseason will be run during the school year, Martin and the board of directors are doing everything possible to make it an early evening for kids and parents.

"One of our greatest challenges is to make it easy for the kids from the Orlando area to race at our track," Martin said. "It will work great during the summer, but we'll do everything we can to get the Orlando folks home early on school nights."

Martin also hopes to have a weekly practice session on Tuesday nights and novice training sessions for the younger children beginning their racing careers. In the quarter-midget program, kids can start in the novice division as young as five years old and can continue to advance through the divisions until they are 16 years old. Plans are also under way for a shop where parents can buy and service quarter- and half-midgets.

Paving of the track began in September and the operators plan on having the first race some time in October.

"We hope to get going before the season ends in November," Martin said. "This year we will run a few races for fun, and next year we will run all season for points. I am excited for racing to get started at the track, but I've learned there is a whole lot more to building a track than I expected. The NASCAR track owners don't have to worry about me competing with them."