COLLEGE STATION, Texas — As College Station’s Texas World Speedway slips into becoming just a memory, two Aggieland natives who grew up with local NASCAR races paid one of their last visits to the old race track site, before it becomes a new residential neighborhood.
Monday afternoon, lifelong College Station resident and NASCAR fanatic, Mike Guidry, brought his Richard Petty customized Dodge Charger, signed Richard Petty cowboy hat, and other memorabilia, out to the edge of the property line for what once was one of the nation’s largest NASCAR tracks.
Guidry wanted one more look at the site of one of his favorite childhood memories before it’s lost to time.
"When you look at it from an aerial view, you see this giant two-mile oval," Guidry said. "When you do your research, you realize this is only a handful of superspeedways that are around the nation.”
Since he grew up in College Station during the 1970s, Guidry was able to witness NASCAR races at the speedway when the track was in its prime. It’s those experiences as a kid that have led him into a decades-long hobby surrounding race cars.
“Around 1998 I started getting into racing again and studying this track," Guidry commented. "[I wondered] - why doesn’t this track exist anymore?”
Through his research, he found that attendance had declined over the years, especially as NASCAR no longer hosted races there in the 1980s.
Guidry and his friend, Brazos County Constable Jeff Reeves, remember watching the former track deteriorate over the years.
Reeves reflected on the period of time when cars salvaged from Hurricane Harvey were stored on site. Reeves was on security detail at the track when that happened.
“You know, you put cars out here that are leaking oil, they’re damaged, and you’ve got people running around out here in vehicles and stuff, it deteriorates the land and parts of the track as well," he stated.
Now, the land is being developed for new homes, with some portions of the Southern Pointe subdivision already having reached completion. Guidry said he just hopes a little care is taken to preserve some relics and artifacts from the once-popular track. He feels it’s a memory that Aggieland should always treasure.
“I’m really hoping they’re going to keep that backstretch of land, and have some sort of a symbolic idea of what was here, hopefully keeping that here for years to come,” he said.
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