The new tunnel is really all you need to know about the new Pocono Raceway.
OK, it isn't all you need to know, but it is the perfect place to start -- the spot where every Pocono race weekend begins, at the trademark entrance located beneath Turn 2 of the 2.5-mile triangular racetrack. For decades, that doorway looked exactly the same, yet completely unlike any other tunnel in motorsports. It was, um, unique. The entrance to its dual steel tubes was garnished by a large white triangle frame and housed in, well, a house. After a typical hard, summer Pennsylvania rain that house would retain large puddles of water, which cars and trucks would slowly slosh through as they entered or left the track.
Now the only water those vehicles will encounter is a peaceful stream, flowing through landscaped waterfalls and rocks into a man-made pond. Near the spring it originates from is a sparkling new Pocono Raceway sign.
It's quite the contrast to what happens behind it, cars breaking loose and losing control in perhaps the most treacherous turn on the Sprint Cup circuit. It is also quite the contrast to the old-school ways of the raceway itself. A sorely-needed fountain of youth, pumping new life into a place that, not so long ago, was considered to be on motorsports life support ... and not for the first time.
"We've been in nonstop overhaul mode around here for a long time now. It feels like we have some sort of construction equipment going all the time," says Brandon Igdalsky, the racetrack's 39-year-old president and CEO. "This is not your grandfather's Pocono Raceway."
Doc's dream
But it is his grandfather's Pocono Raceway.
Dr. Joseph Mattioli was a Philadelphia dentist who'd sacked away enough cash to start a life after teeth, investing in recreational ventures in the northeastern getaway of the Pocono Mountains. One of those projects was the racetrack that became the Raceway.
The original cozy facility built in the 1960s eventually grew into its unmistakably quirky Tricky Triangle shape. There are three straightaways and three turns, all of varying lengths and banking to pay homage to three classic tracks: the Milwaukee Mile, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Trenton (New Jersey) Speedway.
In 1971, Pocono Raceway hosted its first IndyCar race and three years later the NASCAR Winston Cup Series rolled into the mountains.
In a story that has become part of NASCAR lore, Dr. Joe and his wife Rose nearly succumbed to their own financial ignorance when it came to the cost of construction and promotions, skirting bankruptcy multiple times during the 1970s. But a business card scribbled with handwritten inspiration from NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. -- not to mention a second annual Winston Cup date and a pledge of lifetime loyalty -- convinced Doc and Rose to forge ahead.
"All I wanted to do," Doc said during a chat in 2010, "was build a place that people looked forward to going to."
It was around that same time that Brandon Igdalsky was a toddler, the son of the Mattioli's oldest daughter. He and his siblings, brother Nick (now COO) and sister Ashley (corporate secretary/treasurer and executive director of the Village at Pocono) spent their teenage summers coming up from Philly and doing every job there was to do around every inch of the racetrack.
"My personal favorite was working in the sewage plant," Igdalsky says, deadpan, going through a list of dirty jobs that dates back to the first, picking up trash after a race in the summer of 1989. "But my grandparents knew exactly what they were doing with us. There is not a job at this racetrack that I haven't done. That gives me a perspective that not a lot of CEOs have of their business. If someone comes to me and says, 'Hey, this isn't working and it needs to be updated and that's important because of this and that' then chances are I already know what they are talking about."
Rumors of my demise ...
When Igdalsky took over as track president in 2007, there was a lot that needed updating. The old-school feel of Pocono's signature white barn garage, single frontstretch grandstand and, yes, that odd tunnel entrance, were all part of the racetrack's charm.
But "old school" can also too easily slip into "antiquated." After decades of success, once-charming features like the swaths of indoor/outdoor turf (the kind folks install on their patios) and the stucco Medieval Times motif around the iconic Victory Lane tower didn't just feel dated -- they were dated. Especially when compared to the sparkling new facilities that sprung up during the racetrack boom of the late-1990s through the mid-2000s. Speedways young and old were being either built or bought out by the sport's two publicly-traded giants, Bruton Smith's Speedway Motorsports Inc. and the France family's International Speedway Corporation.
Pocono just quietly kept on keeping on. Dr. Joe and Rose felt comfortable in the knowledge that the France family and NASCAR would stick to the promises made by Bill Sr. Eventually, they became the last of a once common breed of racetrack dinosaurs -- the only true family-owned facility on the NASCAR schedule.
The Igdalsky kids spent their earliest executive years still taking orders from their grandparents. It was an honor, but it wasn't easy. Dr. Joe liked his two race dates and he liked them at their traditional 500-mile length. He liked his quirky tunnel. He liked the old grandstands and even the indoor/outdoor turf.
When there was stuff that needed to be added, he did, including the installation of additional SAFER barriers and a catch fence when drivers demanded it in 2010. That same year he oversaw the building of a massive 25-acre solar farm, located across the street and producing more than 1 million kilowatt hours in its first four months, easily the greenest oasis of a sport built on fossil fuels.
"The whole time we were keeping a list of what we might do when we had the chance," Igdalsky says. "We would bring some of those ideas to him and sometimes he would immediately green-light them and other times the answer was no, not yet. But everyone's intention was the same. We wanted to make the place better."
Meanwhile, Pocono kept coming up whenever NASCAR conversations turned to schedule changes or contraction. Critics said the track's two races were too long, too close together on the calendar, and that the facilities weren't up to snuff, particularly as other tracks had expanded to 100,000-plus seats while Pocono stuck to its lone frontstretch grandstand.
Even though the family never believed that its race dates were actually in peril, the chatter still stung.
"It really pissed me off, to be totally honest with you," Igdalsky says, audibly bristling. "But in the end, we knew how hard we were working. We knew what our plans for the future were. And we knew that our fans would have our backs."
... are greatly exaggerated
They were right. The economic crash of 2008 undercut NASCAR perhaps more sharply than any other major sport. Seemingly overnight, those new expansive seating capacities at other tracks weren't covered in ticket-holders, but tarps. During that same era, race fans began to express frustration over homogenization. They perceived across-the-board sameness when it came to the drivers, their race cars and a schedule full of "cookie cutter" tracks.
Suddenly, being different and not being supersized became good problems to have. Fans seeking something unique found their way back to old, classically individual tracks such as the road courses, Martinsville, Darlington and ... Pocono.
As other races struggled to fill seats, Pocono started flirting with sellouts. Just this spring, the past two racetracks visited by the Sprint Cup Series -- Charlotte and Dover -- were without large sections of seating, the sections having just been torn down. This weekend, Pocono's seating grid will be the same as it ever was.
You can hear Igdalsky smiling as he talks about his place becoming cool again.
"I give my grandfather all the credit in the world for not overbuilding when everyone else was," he says. "We never had a lot of corporate money to spend, so what money we could spend he spent on upkeep. He was riding things out a little bit. I think he always knew that the sport would come back to us. And, so far, it looks like it has."
The kids are all right
In 2011, just as business was picking back up, Doc summoned the family to attend an impromptu news conference prior to the August NASCAR race. In a move that shocked everyone in the room, including his closest of kin, he announced his retirement and his immediate succession by his grandchildren. "I put in a trust, so they can't sell it," the 87-year old growled, fighting back tears. "They'll have to run it or they're going to starve."
"I had no idea," Igdalsky confesses. "None of us did. That was classic Doc. He always kept one hand on the reins all the way up until his death [the following January]. But he pretty much said to us to go on and get on with that list of stuff we'd been writing down all those years."
That list started happening fast and hasn't stopped since. Barely two months after Doc's retirement the Igdalskys announced a track repave, along with additional SAFER barriers and a concreting of pit road. They've added a Kids Zone, a mascot (Tricky the Fox), created a fan council, overhauled the oft-forgotten infield road course and simplified the grandstand seating chart.
They've also chosen to team up with a one-time rival, fellow independent racetrack Dover International Speedway, to share media and marketing opportunities, including a celebrity softball game in New Jersey featuring, among others, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Igdalsky is hyperactive when it comes to social media. A new pedestrian tunnel, roll-in luxury suites, a hot dog eating contest, a plane from the Disney film "Planes" landing on the frontstretch on race morning, Vanilla Ice as grand marshal ...
Well, you get the idea. It's a lot. And it's cost a lot. Last fall, Pocono received a $1 million grant from Pennsylvania's state economic development fund to help with improvements, but during this past decade-plus of renovations the family has spent $30 million.
But perhaps the biggest sign that Pocono Raceway is willing do whatever it takes to race into the next decade and beyond is the simplest of them all. The reduction of its race lengths from 500 to 400 miles in 2012 might not seem like it would have been a big deal. It was.
"Of all the things we've done, that was probably the hardest conversations we had with Doc," his grandson reveals. "Those included some bad language and were held at a high volume. But in the end, he finally said, 'You guys know what you're doing, so go on and do it.'"
"They did that because we asked for it. They've done a lot because we've asked for it," says Earnhardt Jr., who swept both 400-milers one year ago, and pointed to the frequent visits that Igdalsky and his staff have made to North Carolina to harvest ideas from teams and drivers. "They've evolved. Maybe they didn't for a while, but they sure have over the last five, 10 years. It's pretty shocking. And they don't seem to stopping anytime soon."
Full steam ahead
That's for sure. On Monday, Igdalsky managed to squeeze in a phone interview between check-ins on the various projects taking place throughout the property, while preparing to make another "big track upgrade announcement" during this weekend's Axalta We Paint Winners 400, Pocono's milestone 75th Sprint Cup event. This August will bring No. 76, followed by its 24th IndyCar race. The open-wheelers have struggled to attract an audience since returning in 2013, but it still feels good to have Dr. Mattioli's original big league tenants back after a nearly a quarter-century away.
It's a long way from the brink of extinction.
"What makes all of the work and all the money spent worth it is hearing those conversations about us changing," Igdalsky says. "I used to visit race shops and you'd see the schedule up on the wall and Pocono Raceway would have a big 'X' drawn through it. Now you go and they have it circled. They can't wait to get here. They look forward to coming to Pocono."
Just like Dr. Joe planned it.