Catchfence

Gateway International Raceway

“I can’t believe it. Actually, I’m saddened,” he said. Ken is a member of St. Louis’ royal racing family, which also includes brothers Rusty and Mike and his nephew, Steve.

“To me, growing up in St. Louis, you dreamed of NASCAR races in St. Louis,” he said. “I guess the stands were empty. But that’s kind of the environment. All the races we’re going to are half-full. We’re in a bad economy. In a year, we’ve lost three tracks.”

One of the others is in Memphis and is owned by the same company as Gateway, Dover Motorsports. The other is near Milwaukee. Gateway seats about 55,000. Dover Motorsports does not release attendance figures, but estimates put the most recent crowd at about 30,000.

“You see the Cardinals filling Busch Stadium 80 times a year, so you know the money is there,” he said. “We can’t even get 40,000 people to a race two times a year. But I truly don’t blame the fans.”

Instead, Wallace attributed the track’s demise to bad design and poor scheduling. The 1.25-mile layout is unlike any other in NASCAR. The track isn’t banked, and each of the turns requires a different car setup, making it difficult to drive. In addition, the size of the parcel of land made it impossible for all the fans to park nearby. Lack of access roads meant that they often had to wait for more than an hour to get off the property after a race.

- St. Louis Post-Dispatch