VIRginia International Raceway: Racing In A Little Piece Of Heaven

“If there is a heaven on earth, it is VIR.” – Paul Newman

That heaven on earth is located in Alton, Virginia, right on the Virginia-North Carolina border and spanning 1300 acres of expansive green hills and valleys between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Atlantic coastline.

Set away from bustling metropolitan areas, VIRginia International Raceway offers a little piece of heaven for everyone. The property, also dubbed “America’s Motorsport Resort,” features not only racing, but also skeet and rifle shooting ranges, hotels overlooking the circuit straightaways, a relaxing spa, and cozy restaurants.

“When we approached what we wanted to do here, it came without any preconceived notions,” said VIR Owner/CEO Connie Nyholm, a former real estate investor. “We pretty much built to demand as people came to us with good ideas, and we’ve embraced them.”

But VIR now is not what VIR has always been. What once was a bit of a forgotten relic after 25 dormant years has now turned into a motorsport paradise that fans from across the country flock to every year.

BACKGROUND

1957-1974: Early Struggles Plague the New Track

VIR opened its gates to road racing fans in 1957, but quickly discovered that success would not come easily. Despite hosting racing legends such as Richard Petty, Don Yenko, Augie Pabst and “Father of the Cobra” Carroll Shelby, winner of 1957 inaugural weekend race, VIR struggled to bring in the crowds and management changed hands after only a few years.

Still, the racing continued. Nearly 10 years after VIR opened, IMSA visited the track for the first time in 1971 with its first-ever GT race, won by a Porsche 914-6 GT driven by Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood. The same duo would win again in 1972 in a Porsche 911S.

That would be the last IMSA race at VIR for decades.

Along with low attendance and management changes, the track was eclipsed by stock car racing, the more popular form of motorsport in the area, and struggled to lure business amidst the oil embargo in 1973 that caused fuel prices to skyrocket. In the end, the challenges were too great for the circuit to overcome and VIR closed its gates in October 1974.

2000: The Reopening

Thinking outside the box, investors Nyholm and Harvey Siegel purchased the VIR property with development plans in mind that went beyond the racetrack. With beautiful land as far as the eye could see, VIR had more to offer its visitors than just incredible sports car racing.

In addition to the resort and other off-roading trails and karting circuits, the property is home to the Virginia Motorsport Technology Park run by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

The Park consists of the National Tire Research Center, which uses complex technology to test tire material and performance, and the SOVA Vehicle Motion Lab, which houses an 8-post shaker rig and sophisticated vehicle data acquisition equipment. The Park continues to grow into a major industry center, with race shops and government training sites as well, that people from all over the world look to for development.

In 2000, sports car racing returned to VIR, which sported newly-paved, widened surfaces on the otherwise untouched layout. The GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series returned to VIR two years later and held events at VIR until 2011. The American Le Mans Series raced at VIR in 2012 and ’13 before the merged IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship began its tradition of featuring GT racing at the facility in 2014.

Earlier this year, Nyholm was among those included on Virginia Business magazine’s 2016 Most Influential Virginians, as recognition for VIR’s success and her participation on civic organization boards.

“I think the most rewarding part about here is that no one has to come here,” she said. “They all come here because they choose to. Everybody can go anywhere else that they want to but they choose to come here. When we first opened, it was primarily as a club track and we’ve grown to be a professional track, and that’s what I want to do more of, bring high-level racing to VIR.”

DRIVER PERSPECTIVE

John Edwards, driver of the BMW Team RLL No. 100 BMW M6: “I’ve had a lot of races at VIR and it’s always one of my favorites to go back to because it has a very eclectic mix of corners. You have super high-speed corners likes the esses in Turn 10, but then you have very challenging low speed sections like Turns 4 and 5 getting quicker into 6, and it’s always a very difficult balance to handle the car because one corner feeds into the other, both in some of the low-speed sections and in the high-speed sections, so I’ve always enjoyed that challenge.

“It’s also challenging to get the car right, to get the setup right for the engineers because you can’t just pile downforce on because you do reach high top speeds, but at the same time you can’t rip it off because you really need some great balance in the low-speed stuff as well. It’s just a very challenging place with a lot of elevation change and I think a little bit of everything.”

TRACK PERSPECTIVE

IMSA races take place on the VIR Full Course track configuration, one of five circuit layouts consisting of 3.27 miles of winding turns and elevation changes.

• : Looking up the hill while standing at the base of Turn 7 is one of the more iconic views at VIR. The high-speed esses wind up towards South Bend (Turn 10) with the VIR villas just off the track to the left-hand side.  
• : The second of a pair of tight right-handers leading onto VIR’s long back straight, Oak Tree is by far the track’s most famous corner. Named for the 200-year old oak tree that nearly marked the apex of the corner, Turn 12 looks a bit different these days as the tree regretfully collapsed during the summer of 2013.

The WeatherTech Championship and IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge return to VIR on August 25-27, 2017 and ticket information is available by calling 434-822-7700 or by visiting VIRNow.com.