This is amazing! It is excellent! I hope it stays on track (punny?) through all of the potential economic goofballs that may come.
Photography Credit: J.A. Ackley (Rusty Bittle), Flatrock Motorsports Park (insert)
Nearly 800 acres. Three road courses. Beautiful Tennessee scenery. A facility geared toward racers. And, most importantly, a mission to promote racing. Flatrock Motorsports Park in Tennessee officially broke ground this morning on their project that’s set to open in early 2023.
Founding partner and president Rusty Bittle, a latecomer to getting behind the wheel of a race car, hopes this track helps find racers early in their lives and help grow the sport.
Photography Credit: J.A. Ackley
“I was in my mid-30s when I found out I could drive karts,” Rusty says. “I started doing track days a few years ago. I started racing last year. This upcoming season I’m going to do a full season of SRO GT America. I didn’t know [racing] was available to anyone.”
Bitten by the racing bug, he’s jumped all in with the sport, leading the effort to build Flatrock Motorsports Park, situated about an hour west of Knoxville, Tennessee on I-40. He’s made it a mission to get more people involved in the sport.
“I started looking for a piece of land just to build a kart track,” says Rusty. “I was old when I got into racing. I want to see youth get involved at a very early age in motorsports, and karting is a very big part of that. We want to support them. We want to grow the motorsports community. Hopefully, someday, we’ll have a U.S. Formula One driver. We’d love to see that kid [come from being] grown and pushed through Flatrock.”
The facility will have three courses when completed.
Image Courtesy Flatrock Motorsports Park
The Club Track will finish first. It measures 3.5 miles and has an elevation change of 127 feet. The expected lap time for a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car is 2:04 minutes.
Later, they’ll add a Grand Prix track. It measures 2.6 miles and has an elevation change of 58 feet. The expected lap time for a GT3 Cup car is 1:42 minutes.
After that’s built, they can combine the two to create a 5.9-mile, 31-turn behemoth, with 127 feet of elevation change. They expect a GT3 Cup car to turn a lap of 3:28 minutes.
While the track’s certainly looking for club members, it is not exclusive. Far from it, according to Bittle.
“We will have availability for track days,” says Rusty. “We’ve talked to various sanctioning bodies. We will have a lot of events for anybody that wants to get on track.”
Image Courtesy Flatrock Motorsports Park
For more information on the facility, visit experienceflatrock.com.
This is amazing! It is excellent! I hope it stays on track (punny?) through all of the potential economic goofballs that may come.
This is going to be an epic facility that will immediately be a top 10 within the lower 48.
Nice to see some positive news in the Motorsports arena, instead of another track shutting down.
Bring all your horsepowers. BTW, this is the result of Oak Ridge TN NIMBYs not letting the track go through there, so they picked up and found a nearby community that welcomed the economic development. Glad to see this going in. I've gotten a sneak peak at some grading thats going on now, and the scale is impressive.
Seems a little backwards making the club track nearly a mile longer then the Grand Prix track.
Club Motorsport in NH had planning pains but it was built and it is fantastic.
This track is very exciting and will be a bout 2 hours from where I will retire.
Oooooo nice. That'll be within weekend TT event driving distance!
Flatrock? Do you mean Flatrock, MI? Home of the Ford Mustang factory?
Ya know, like how Bowling Green, KY has the Corvette track next to the Corvette factory?
Sadly, no.
Website makes it seem pretty exclusive...
Apply for membership,
Do you have private air transportation?
Are you referred by a current member?
Do you have a comp license?
Is it a secret where this is located? Is it close to any cities or out in BFE?
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