Most NASCAR tracks have incredibly well-documented histories compiled throughout the ages. Even if you’ve never heard of it, someone somewhere definitely has. Well—except for the mysterious Air Base Speedway in Greenville, South Carolina.
The Air Base Speedway held one single NASCAR race in 1951, according to Racing Reference. The purportedly half-mile dirt oval that no one has ever heard of was a 200-lap shootout between fifteen cars held at night.
A half-mile dirt track that had been built equipped to race in the dark, meaning it had to have been well-lit. That’s not something you hear about every day.
YouTuber S1apSh0es was perplexed by this whole mystery and went digging deeper to see what he could find. His results are documented in the following twelve-minute video:
The whole thing is fascinating. Not much information about this track appears online, aside from a few newspaper clippings and some screenshots of the track from satellite images back in the day.
As per his findings, the race was promoted by a mysterious man named Charlie Hicks, who claimed that he’d covered the dirt track in a chemically-treated compound to keep the dust down. The NASCAR race was held in November. And it was also reported that there’d be another Grand National Circuit race taking place there the following August.
But what the hell happened to it after that?
No one really knows. There isn’t a ton of info online, and even people local to Greenville seem to have completely forgotten that this track existed. There aren’t any trackside pictures available, nor are there any firsthand accounts of how the race was or why the track faded from the collective racing consciousness.
So, S1apSh0es is turning it into something of a contest. If you’re able to provide both a ground-level shot of the racing at the track and an action shot of the racing itself, you can win either a copy of NASCAR Heat 4 or $60. Which is cool and all, but it’s worth doing some deep dives here just to solve this half-mile mystery.
If you’ve got any info on this, definitely send it his way—I will not rest until I know what happened to Air Base Speedway.