accomplishedTen NASCAR tracks:
- Dover International Speedway (Dover, Del.)
- Las Vegas Motor Speedway (Las Vegas, Nev.)
- Nazareth Speedway (Nazareth, Pa.)
- Watkins Glen International (Watkins Glen, N.Y.)
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway (Indianapolis, Ind.)
- The Milwaukee Mile (West Allis, Wis.)
- Bristol Motor Speedway (Bristol, Tenn.)
- Lowe's Motor Speedway (Concord, N.C.)
- Atlanta Motor Speedway (Hampton, Ga.)
- Mansfield Motorsports Speedway (Mansfield, Ohio)
This list came about as a result of a discussion I was having the other day at work. We sell a gift book called 101 Reasons to Live in Virginia (or something like that) that makes the claim that Virginia has more NASCAR tracks per square mile than any other state. When I heard that, I said that it couldn't possibly be true, because New Hampshire is much smaller than Virginia and would therefore have more tracks per square mile than Virginia despite have fewer total tracks. The GM didn't buy my argument, so of course I had to research it. (I started at work, and when the other CM, who had heard my conversation with the GM, saw me flipping through a copy of Insiders' Guide to the NASCAR Tracks, she said, "I can't believe you're looking that up." "That just proves you don't know me very well," I replied.)
Anyway, NASCAR.com was very helpful in locating the 31 U.S. NASCAR tracks (the 32nd is in Mexico City), and EnchantedLearning.com provided the area of the states in which the tracks are located. I plugged all the data into a spreadsheet (because the only thing more fun than pointless research is making pointless spreadsheets) and determined that, in fact, Virginia did not have more NASCAR tracks than any other state. That honor goes to (drum roll) Delaware, which is home to one NASCAR speedway and has an area of just 1,954 square miles, giving it a whopping 0.0005118 NASCAR tracks per square mile. Virginia, by comparison, has a meager track/sq. mi. ratio of 0.0000468, a full order of magnitude fewer than its peninsular partner.
Here's the full chart, for those of you who could give a rat's ass about this:
| State | No. NASCAR tracks | Area (sq. mi.) | Tracks per sq. mi. |
| Delaware | 1 | 1,954 | 0.0005118 |
| New Hampshire | 1 | 9,351 | 0.0001069 |
| Tennessee | 3 | 42,146 | 0.0000712 |
| Indiana | 2 | 36,420 | 0.0000549 |
| Virginia | 2 | 42,769 | 0.0000468 |
| Pennsylvania | 2 | 46,058 | 0.0000434 |
| Illinois | 2 | 57,918 | 0.0000345 |
| South Carolina | 1 | 32,007 | 0.0000312 |
| Florida | 2 | 65,758 | 0.0000304 |
| Kentucky | 1 | 40,411 | 0.0000247 |
| Ohio | 1 | 44,828 | 0.0000223 |
| Alabama | 1 | 52,423 | 0.0000191 |
| North Carolina | 1 | 53,821 | 0.0000186 |
| New York | 1 | 54,475 | 0.0000184 |
| Georgia | 1 | 59,441 | 0.0000168 |
| Wisconsin | 1 | 65,503 | 0.0000153 |
| California | 2 | 163,707 | 0.0000122 |
| Kansas | 1 | 82,282 | 0.0000122 |
| Michigan | 1 | 96,810 | 0.0000103 |
| Colorado | 1 | 104,100 | 0.0000096 |
| Nevada | 1 | 110,567 | 0.0000090 |
| Arizona | 1 | 114,006 | 0.0000088 |
| Texas | 1 | 268,601 | 0.0000037 |
