The Egg-Shaped Oval: Origin Story

and it made it like no other ever. His vision was to build an Indianapolis down south for stock cars. So then when he got this property, it wasn't big enough to do that. So then his idea was, okay, I'll just build a track the same on each end, a true oval. So he started building now what is now turns one and two, the old turns three and four. Well, he started to do the same thing on his end. And Sherman Ramsay, who had who had given him the land at that car game, had been out of the country. He comes back into the country and says, "Harl, what are you doing? You've gone too far over on the property." Because what was where this building and stuff is right here? That used to be a Mena pond. So if you see there and all the way down back over there, can you see that? Yeah, I can see the pond. That's That's Ramsay's pond. Okay. And so Mr. Ramsay had his minnow pond right over here and he wanted to use his minnows to fish in his pond. Harold thought he was just going to throw dirt in it, cover it up, and he was going to make this end the same way it was on the other end as far as the circumference, everything else. And Ramsay said, "You're not doing it." He had to cut this end shorter than he did on the other end, making the egg shape. This is the bottom of the egg. Now, I can show you. And we'll go in and I'll show you a little bit what is coming out of turn two. When when he built that turn, it sort of came to a point where he had to bring it this way. So he he was off a little bit to make it just completely nice and flush. It came to here and he's like, "Oh goodness, I got to I got to stop and I got to make it straight." So it comes to a stop and then that's why you have so many people that have some trouble coming out of what is turn two now because he had to cut that corner shorter than he anticipated. A lot of it was eyeball construction. Now, he had some blueprints, but again, it was the first time it had ever been done, you know, so it was it was a learning as you go type of thing. But his idea was we're going to get it done. And they did. It's a great example how sometimes what you think um are your problems or deficiencies can become your assets when packaged the right way. That's right. In 1997 was the year that we moved the finish line from one side to the other. And the reason for that was like you saw before, we didn't have there's not a lot of property over there. It's all owned on the other side of the street by private land owners for the most…