TOOELE COUNTY — Larry H. Miller is famously crazy about cars. His name has been as synonymous with car dealerships as it has with the Utah Jazz for many years. But on Wednesday, as his plans for a "world-class" motor sports park became official, it was with Miller behind the wheel not of one of his beloved Cobras but a slow-moving earth mover.
After a quick rain-soaked speech Wednesday afternoon, Miller ceremoniously broke the muddy ground on the spot between Tooele and Grantsville where his 500-acre Miller Motorsports Park at Deseret Peak is expected to open in just four months.
"For me personally this is the most exciting project I've done," the man behind the Delta Center and Jordan Commons said. "It was sort of a childhood dream. . . . This is something I've had in the back of my mind for some time."
The park will feature what Miller said will be North America's longest road-racing track, a 4.5-mile course divided into a western and an eastern track of about equal lengths. There will also be a 0.89-mile go-cart track, and Miller said, "This is not your father's go-cart." He said the carts will travel at about 100 mph with parts of the racer's body little more than 2 inches from the ground.
Miller foresees the course, a 30-minute drive from Salt Lake City, as being a major draw for Utahns and out-of-towners alike. He predicts that tens of thousands of people will come to the track's major weekend-long races — and he hopes one day those races will number about six or eight each year.
He said five or six major races have already expressed some interest in using the park during the 2006 season — two or three years sooner than Miller would expect a track to gain enough clout to draw that kind of interest.
"First and foremost, this is for the racers," he said. "My theory is . . . that if you get the cars and the drivers to come . . . then the people will come" to watch.
The racers will come for major national races of all types except Formula One, Miller said. He said the track could even host NASCAR races one day, though its track is not the typical oval type associated with NASCAR. Instead, the course resembles everyday driving conditions, including turns, hills and valleys. But Miller said NASCAR currently has two races of that type, so he isn't ruling it out.
The county gave Miller the go-ahead for the park in February, and Miller praised the County Commission members, who were on hand at Wednesday's groundbreaking.
Miller said he considered several sites for his motor sports park, including Colorado and Salt Lake County. "We decided to come here for a bunch of reasons, but three of them are standing right here," he said of the commissioners.
In addition to hosting racing events, the park will offer local racing enthusiasts a place to drive their own race cars in a fun, safe environment, Miller's partner Tom Mabey has said. Racers can buy memberships and likely will be able to rent garages to store their cars at the facility.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com