NASCAR Playoff Race Adds Chapter to Texas Motor Speedway's Highlights and Lowlights

• A quarter-century after its inaugural Cup Series race, the Track That Bruton Built is a very different place from the speedway that saw its first green flag fly for a NASCAR Cup race in 1997.

• Jeff Burton won the first Cup race and, after the second NASCAR weekend at the speedway, the track was reconfigured.

• In recent months, there have been rumors and rumblings of possible major changes to the TMS racing surface or its configuration.

Imagine your boss telling you to pack up, go out to the Texas plains and build a speedway. A very big speedway.

This was the incredible assignment Eddie Gossage got from Bruton Smith, auto racing tycoon and builder of speedways, in the mid-1990s. NASCAR was roaring in those years, its attendance figures bulging and its television numbers ringing bells.

Texas needed a superspeedway, a racing palace, Smith figured, and he was just the man to build it. Gossage had been a key Smith lieutenant at Charlotte Motor Speedway, learning his craft at the knee of master promoter Humpy Wheeler. The buzz in the hallways of Speedway Motorsports, Smith’s growing speedway organization, was that Gossage had earned the right to fill the next managerial vacancy at one of Smith’s tracks. He wouldn’t necessarily have guessed that he would be asked to move to Texas and start from square one (or, in this case, oval one).

Thus began a long and winding journey that would see a motorsports cathedral of sorts rise from Texas brush, a weather event for the ages that happened to coincide with the track opening and a race car circling the track at more than 233 miles per hour. And guns. Yes, many guns.

Fast-forward to the present, and TMS throws open its gates this weekend to welcome the NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series playoffs. A quarter-century after its inaugural Cup Series race, the Track That Bruton Built is a very different place from the speedway that saw its first green flag fly in the middle of muck and mire.

The speedway’s opening race weekend, which ended with a Cup race April 6, 1997, was the opposite of a “grand” opening. Rain drenched the speedway area most of race week, turning parking lots into messy mudpits and cramping the style of Gossage, who had made extravagant plans to unveil his masterpiece to the racing world.

Playing against the grain, Gossage had big ideas for the national anthem. While many had expected him to sign Willie Nelson or George Strait or another Texas troubadour for the anthem, he instead pivoted to renowned classical pianist Van Cliburn, also a Texas native. A square peg for a round (oval) hole, but, in Gossage’s imaginative and tricky mind, it was a perfect fit.

Race day was calamitous. In part because of muddy parking lots being closed, traffic was backed up for miles on roads leading to the speedway area. Fans remember driving four hours to cover 10 miles. Gossage helicoptered in from his neighborhood.

Although a piano had been hauled in on a flatbed truck for Cliburn, the keys remained silent. The helicopter scheduled to deliver Cliburn to the track was far behind schedule, and the race clock waits for no one. The lead singer for the house band at Billy Bob’s Texas night club happened to be at the track, and he was drafted to do the anthem. He complained that he didn’t know the words. His rapid response was to write them inside his cowboy hat.

To his credit, Cliburn agreed to return to a much drier TMS to do the anthem in 1998.

A significantly bigger issue had developed on track during race week. Drivers complained about the Turn 1 area and the state of the transition there, and their concerns became real as a huge crash happened in the first turn on the first lap.

Part of the problem stemmed from the track’s unusual design, which was supposed to be welcoming to both stock cars and Indy cars. Instead, the problem swelled. Drivers continued to moan. T-shirts reading “Shut Up and Drive” went on sale at the track.