Poconos Raceway

Pocono Raceway is the new name for the Pocono International Raceway. It is also sometimes called the Tricky Triangle. Pocono Raceway is a superspeedway situated in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania at Long Pond. It is the meeting place for two annual NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races, which are held in June and August, and one NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event in July. Pocono Raceway is one of a very few NASCAR tracks not owned by either Speedway Motorsports, Inc. or International Speedway Corporation.

Poconos Raceway

The NASCAR Sprint Series will return to the Pocono Raceway in 2010, which is very good news for fans and the Pocono Raceway. There will be two annual races and both will be fully sponsored for the first time. The races will be called the Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 and the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500.

Another surprise is the advent of the Camping World Truck Series for the first time. This latter will take place during the second NASCAR weekend for the Ponoco Mountains 150. The ARCA Re/Max Series will also hold their events at the speedway this year.

By Gillette taking up this sponsorship they will be only the second company to have sponsored both a Pocono 500 and secured naming rights for the Foxboro Stadium - the home stadium of the New England Patriots. The other was the Schaefer Brewing Company in the Pocono Raceway's formative years.

There is however some controversy about the Pocono Raceway. The turns and the degrees of banking make it necessary to change gear often, which slows down the race. This can be seen as a good thing because it makes the Pocono Raceway safer, but some drivers and fans have called for the 500 mile circuit to be reduced to 400 miles because it takes too long to complete.

Other experts point to the ability to frequently drive four or five cars abreast at Pocono which is impossible at some of the faster race tracks. This makes the average finish time of 225 minutes not far off the Pocono Raceway average.

Other opinions in the Pocono Raceway's favour point to the exceptional challenges presented by the course and its three completely different turns. They say it challenges the drivers and the back up teams more than on more conventional raceways. However some fans still just want to see the cars speeding around the track. It is possibly a question of a connoisseur's or a driver's track and a commercial 'as fast as possible' track.

There have been calls from some circles for NASCAR to take away at least one of their three events for the Pocono Raceway, but that is unlikely to happen. The Pocono Raceway is too well situated for some of the great eastern seaboard metropolises. Pocono can almost guarantee visitors from New York, New Jersey and Delaware to say nothing of Pennsylvanians themselves.

It is pretty certain that the Pocono Raceway has a bright and lucrative future for many years to come.