Grattan Raceway
Grattan Raceway is a motorsports facility consisting of a 1.88-mile (3.02-km) road course for race cars/motorcycles and a motocross track, located at 30-minutes away from downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Raceway runs in hilly terrain, with consecutive elevation changes that create numerous crests hiding the turns behind them from the driver's perspective. Influenced by Lake Michigan nearby, the climate in Grand Rapids is cold and temperate, with freezing Winters and abundant rainfall even in the driest season. This fact makes the Grattan Raceway an excellent place to practice driving on wet asphalt, as many racing teams for IndyCar, TransAm, and professional motorcycle Series do.
The track starts in the middle of the front straightaway, going downhill through turns number 1, 2, and 3. Turn number four is blind, going after a hillcrest that leads to an undulating, semi-straight section ideal for speeding up. The turns 5 to 8 a snake up and down in quick succession, alternating from right to left four times. The three-dimensional layout of the Grattan Raceway makes racers feel gravity and centrifugal forces at full strength in this section. Turn number 9 is a sweeper leading into number 10, the tightest corner in the circuit. The fastest section of the track starts from here with two sweeping turns, number 11 and number 12, that take drivers to the front straight, where they pass the Start / Finish Line at 150 miles an hour (241 kilometers an hour).
