After the Grosso family sold New Egypt Speedway in 2006, it is once again owners of the New Jersey dirt oval. And, Rick Grosso Jr. is looking to make changes.
“I want to bring New Egypt Speedway back as a family racetrack,” said Grosso, 54, of Belle Mead, New Jersey. “Racing is family entertainment, and we will remember that.”
Grosso will make capital improvements toward achieving that goal.
“We will be gutting everything,” Grosso said. “The bathrooms and the concessions will be rebuilt. We even have a new chef, ‘Meatball,’ who will be making London broil sandwiches, a wide selection of barbecue, as well as the regular speedway items like hamburgers and pizza. Everything will be painted. Landscaping will be done to make the facility more attractive than ever.”
The changes Grosso plans to make won’t be limited to what surrounds the dirt oval, but also the dirt oval itself.
“We are going to raise turns one and two by four to five feet,” said Grosso. “Turns three and four are already banked to that height. This will make the track consistent all the way around. We will have two new six-foot guardrails to install.”
Likewise, just about everything at the track is on the table for changes. That includes the cars, too.
“We are taking away the sail panels [from the modifieds],” Grosso said. “A lot of people were complaining that cars from other area tracks couldn’t race here because they would have to change the entire car. The drivers voted to do away with sail panels. We know it will also help when other tracks rain out and drivers want to race here.”
Grosso also seeks to refresh the staff at the track, too. You can find job openings here.
New Egypt Speedway, back under the Grosso family’s control, will debut with a practice day on March 25. Then, it opens the season on April 1 with the Cabin Fever 40.
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
