For Pocono, Solar Power and Safety Improvements
By DAVE CALDWELL
Published: July 31, 2010
LONG POND, Pa. — Doc Mattioli is 85 and does not get around his racetrack in the mountains quite as well as he used to. Even 10 years ago, he would hop into a bulldozer to take care of a rough spot. Now he must use a wheelchair, and his once-booming voice seems several decibels softer.
But there he was on Friday, on a muddy, 25-acre patch outside Pocono Raceway, celebrating an accomplishment with his great-grandchildren.
Pocono Raceway, carved out of a former asparagus farm 40 years ago, became what it says is the world’s largest solar-powered sports facility.
In the background, stock cars buzzed around the racetrack, practicing for Sunday’s 500-mile Nascar Sprint Cup race. Mattioli’s unique, triangular track has been criticized by drivers over the years — even later Friday afternoon — but they keep returning.
“When I hear these negative reports, I say, ‘Well, then, why do you come back? If you don’t like it, why are you coming back?’ ” Mattioli said. “There’s always somebody criticizing when you’re in a business like this.”
He paused, smiled and said: “I’ve been hearing this for 30 years. I just laugh.”
The solar farm, which The Associated Press reported cost $16 million, will power the racetrack and 1,000 nearby homes. This was not the brainstorm of Mattioli, a former Philadelphia dentist who is rarely called by his given name, Joseph; it was the idea of his 34-year-old grandson, Brandon Igdalsky, now the track president.
But Igdalsky had to get Mattioli’s blessing. Igdalsky and George Ewald, the track superintendent, said they were thinking about a much more modest solar project until Mattioli said they could use a cleared parcel of land once used as parking lots for the track.
Other work is about to begin at Pocono. After Sprint Cup cars race around the track on Sunday for the 66th time, obsolete steel guardrails will be removed. Soft walls known as Safer barriers will be erected. Igdalsky said the renovation would have been done faster had the Sprint Cup Series not just been here in June.
Before practice on Friday, Kevin Harvick, the Sprint Cup points leader, said he was glad to learn that Pocono planned a renovation. A week earlier, before a race at Indianapolis, Harvick said Pocono had the worst barriers of any Sprint Cup track.
Igdalsky is not shaken by remarks like that. “You can’t get better if you don’t get criticism,” he said.
And Harvick had something positive to say about the aging, bumpy racetrack at Pocono. “It’s not like Indy, where everything is dead smooth,” he said. “We’re going to have some character in the racetrack to work on this week.”
The drivers would also welcome having more of the infield paved, especially after witnessing what happened to Kasey Kahne’s car on June 6 in the last race here. Kahne’s car, which was blocked entering a corner, lost traction on the infield grass and skipped back onto the track. It was hit hard by several other cars and nearly flipped over the outside wall at the track, which is lined with a row of short trees. Kahne was not injured, but the driver Greg Biffle said in a July interview with Sports Illustrated, “They’re going to kill someone there.”
On Friday, Jimmie Johnson, the four-time Sprint Cup champion, said of Kahne, “I mean, he could have been out there in the trees.”
Johnson also said: “Not just this track, but I don’t think grass has any purpose inside the walls of a racetrack any more. There’s no friction to slow down the vehicle, and then the cars just hammer the wall when that’s the case.”
Pocono is hardly the only pincushion for drivers’ complaints. And drivers seem to be grumbling a little less than they did even earlier this season. Part of the reason is that word leaked last week that Nascar fined two drivers, Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin, for making detrimental comments about the sport, which has been hit hard by the poor economy.
At a news conference Friday afternoon, Tony Stewart, an owner and driver who has been critical in the past, said, “We’re all shooting ourselves in the foot because we’re convincing some people this stuff is bad.”
Igdalsky said that criticisms of the track were, in a way, appreciated. When he and Mattioli were asked in separate interviews how often they thought about improving the facilities, they had the same answer: constantly. Nascar is expected to return for two more races in 2011.
Ticket sales for this weekend’s race, Igdalsky said, were good. On Friday, Mattioli had a cutting-edge solar farm to show the public. Maybe that would not improve the racing on Sunday, but he said it would make an impression on the four generations of his family that attended.
“And that, to me, makes it worth the whole thing,” Mattioli said.
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