Best part, is that it's just over 30 minutes from my house. I loved this place before I even pulled into the parking lot. For the locals, it's located in Carpentersville, IL. The preserve is now called Raceway woods. The track used to be called Meadowdale Raceway.
This is what the main straight and pit/grandstand area used to look like back in the day:
This is the track layout with corners and their names:
Back in glory days
This is the silo that you can see in the picture above. This is how it is now. It's been restored to look like the original just a few years ago
Yours truly following Growvember...but I digress
Part of the track. This is new pavement to prevent it from overgrowing
This is the turn named Little Monza on the map. This used to be a highly banked, very fast, long, downhill right-hander. There are remnants of the old bank and the retaining wall
This is the same Little Monza turn looking the other way-direction of travel during the race. The slope downwards is not seen with the camera. This was truly a very fast, banked turn
A view from an old bridge that went over the race track. Most likely used to get the spectators to the Grand Stands
Same bridge when standing where the track used to be.
This is a very wide, 90* left coming onto the straight away, shooting by the Grand Stands on the right and pits on the left. Before the turn is where the pit entrance was. Called the Monza wall.
This is the main straight just past the grand stands. At the time, this was the longest straight in the world according to the stuff I read. It dips down over the hill that you can see, going over a bridge and transitioning to that fast, banked Monza turn
This is what the continuation of the straight looks like taken from the hill in the pic above. The bridge is currently being fixed.
This is a wider view of the silo. In one of the pictures at the beginning of this post you can see a photo of racecars going around the silo. The gravel road you see here was a part of the racetrack back in the day
I really enjoyed walking around there for a few hours and I walked the whole length of the track. I wish it remained.
