GRANTSVILLE, Utah — In a state that loves college football and professional basketball…professional motorsports racing is still struggling to catch on. Built in a city with a population too small to even fill the Delta Center for a Jazz Game, the Utah Motorsports Campus is remote.
In Grantsville, Utah you’ll find an exhilarating sport that is still relatively small, but growing, and making a difference for Utah’s economy little by little.
The fastest cars in the world and land speed records have been synonymous with Utah since the early 1900s. The Bonneville Salt Flats put Utah on the motorsports map way back in 1899.
But just East of that salt track is a cement track built 107 years later. And the UMC is starting to make some more noise.
Ian Lacy owns a race team here and says, “It's really a blessing to be able to be a driver. That is very special, and that's what I feel like I was put here to do.” Lacy has been in the motorsports industry all his life. “My dad was kind of a gearhead and used to wake me up to watch F-1 early in the morning.”
Lacy moved to Utah just for this track and feels it’s his calling to train the next generation of drivers. He says, “Coaching is obviously a lot of fun, helping drivers develop, and seeing their progress. Being a part of their of their motorsports journey is really special.”
According to Lacy, UMC has a good base of enthusiasts from northern Utah who rent garages for their track cars and the venue brings in race crews and fans from across the country for more than a half dozen events a year. They all stay in hotels and eat at restaurants. He says, “So it’s a good source of revenue for not just the county, but the state as well.”
Lacy says the enthusiasm is still growing. “We have seen some advancement in the numbers of people coming to the track and competing, like, for instance, in the NASA series. And hopefully, as more people become aware of the facility here, we'll see some more traffic.”
A lot of the weekly use of this track is by local race car enthusiasts, weekend warriors with fast cars. Some are legitimate up-and-coming race car drivers.
“Most of the motorsports shops here are also equipped with engineers, driver coaches, whatever is needed to help somebody on their path,” says Lacy. “It's been a fantastic voyage. It's been a lot of fun. We've been, luckily, very successful, and we hope to continue in the future.”
UMC starts race car drivers as young as ten years old on their cart track. Ian Lacy is always looking to coach the next diamond in the rough.
