Yahoo Autos Charlotte's New Track Gives You a Taste of the Nürburgring in the U.S.
The Ten Tenths Motor Club, a new road course, clubhouse, and garage complex, debuted yesterday on the grounds of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. But this isn't a "Roval" and doesn't incorporate any part of the adjacent NASCAR superspeedway. It's a stand-alone 1.7-mile track situated on 100 acres and set for completion next April. Well, the entire facility is slated for completion then—the track is done now, and it's a fun one.
Designed by former Formula 1 driver Alex Wurz, the course can be run in either direction or broken into two smaller tracks, one of which is fitted with an irrigation system to wet the surface for drifting antics. The entire track is lighted, facilitating plans for three run groups per day—morning, afternoon, and night. It's not flat, either, with 112 feet of elevation change between Turns 6 and 14. The last bit of that, the "Gordon Drop," precedes our favorite corner on the track, the Carousel. Modeled after the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife original, the Carousel is a steeply banked left-hander that requires speed and commitment.
The track is a collaboration between Speedway Motorsports and Rick Hendrick, who was on hand for the road course's public debut and explained part of his motivation for getting involved. "I love cars, but I don't get a chance to exercise my cars because I'm scared of getting a ticket on I-85," he said.
He parked a few of his cars along the track, and you can see how tickets might be a problem in something like a Mercedes-AMG One, with its 11,000-rpm 1.6-liter V-6.
The track is too tight to get anywhere near the top speed of a One, but we got a thrill ride with Jeff Gordon in the NASCAR Garage 56 car, and this is a track that will keep repeat visitors entertained. "You've got elevation change, fast sections where you load the car side to side, blind corners, heavy braking... it's got it all," Gordon said.
The Carousel is particularly entertaining—it's unusual to enter a corner and feel the g-forces press your body down into the seat. We didn't get full flying laps because part of the track was serving as a ride-swap pit area, but we can see it'll take some time to learn the nuances here. And that, of course, is the idea.
"I have more laps than anyone here right now," Gordon said. "And my goal is to keep it that way."
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