Pocono Raceway: Inside the Tricky Triangle
Deep in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, near the small community of Long Pond, sits the strangest superspeedway in American motorsport. Pocono Raceway is a 2.5-mile oval that is not really an oval at all: it has only three corners, three straightaways of wildly different lengths, and a shape that from the air looks like a slightly squashed triangle. Drivers have spent more than half a century trying to solve it, which is exactly why everyone calls it the Tricky Triangle.
A spinach farm becomes a speedway
Pocono Raceway owes its existence to Dr. Joseph Mattioli, a Philadelphia dentist who, together with his wife Dr. Rose Mattioli, poured his savings and his considerable stubbornness into building a racetrack on former farmland in the Pocono Mountains. The land had previously been used to grow spinach, a detail the track still enjoys telling visitors about. A smaller circuit opened on the property in the late 1960s, but the main event arrived in 1971, when the full 2.5-mile triangle was completed and hosted its first 500-mile Indy car race. Unlike most major American ovals, Pocono never passed into the hands of a large corporate track operator. It remained a family business, run by the Mattiolis and later by their grandchildren, which gives the place a personality that the more polished corporate facilities often lack. Doc Mattioli steered the track through decades of financial storms, and his insistence on independence still defines how Pocono presents itself today.
Three corners borrowed from three tracks
The most famous fact about Pocono is that each of its three corners was inspired by a different legendary circuit, and each has its own banking angle and character. Turn 1, at the end of the enormous frontstretch, is the most steeply banked of the three and draws on the old Trenton Speedway in New Jersey. Turn 2, universally known as the Tunnel Turn because the infield access tunnel passes beneath it, is a fast, flat, narrow corner modeled on the turns of Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Turn 3, the gateway back onto the long frontstretch, is the flattest of all and takes its cues from the Milwaukee Mile. The result is a track that behaves like three different racetracks stitched together. A car that is perfectly balanced through Turn 1 will usually be nervous in the Tunnel Turn and lazy in Turn 3. There is no single setup that suits all three corners, so engineers must decide where to be strong and where merely to survive.
The geometry of trickiness
The corners are only half of the puzzle. Pocono's three straightaways are all different lengths, and the frontstretch is one of the longest in American oval racing at roughly 3,700 feet. Cars reach enormous speeds along it before braking, or at least lifting, for Turn 1. The other two straights are considerably shorter, which changes the rhythm of every lap: a long, patient run down the front, a quick dash between Turns 1 and 2, and a medium-length back straight leading into the flat final corner. Because the banking is modest by superspeedway standards, Pocono rewards mechanical grip and clean aerodynamics rather than flat-out bravery. In stock cars, drivers even shift gears during a lap, something almost unheard of at other big ovals. The track has often been described as the closest thing to a road course that still counts as an oval, and many teams historically used road-course thinking when preparing for it.
The Indy car years
Pocono's first great era belonged to open-wheel racing. The inaugural 500-mile race in 1971 was won by Mark Donohue, and through the 1970s and 1980s the Pocono 500 stood alongside the Indianapolis 500 as one of the crown-jewel long-distance events on the national championship calendar. The greats of the era all raced there, and the combination of huge straightaway speeds and three unforgiving corners made it one of the most demanding events of the season. Indy car racing left after 1989 as the track's fortunes and the sport's politics shifted, and for more than two decades the triangle belonged to stock cars alone. In 2013 IndyCar returned, and for several summers the series again ran 500-mile races in the mountains before departing once more after the 2019 season. The open-wheel chapters of Pocono's story were marked by breathtaking speed, but also by tragedy, and the track's history includes somber days that the racing community still remembers.
NASCAR's mountain fixture
NASCAR arrived at the full circuit in 1974, when Richard Petty won the first Cup Series race held on the triangle. From 1982 onward the track settled into a familiar pattern of two Cup weekends every summer, making Pocono a fixture of the July racing calendar. For decades the races ran the full 500 miles, an endurance test on a track where passing requires planning several corners ahead. The distances were later trimmed to make the shows tighter, and in 2020 Pocono made history by hosting NASCAR's first modern doubleheader weekend, with two Cup Series points races run on consecutive days. Pocono has produced a remarkable list of first-time winners over the years, partly because its odd layout levels the playing field: experience at conventional ovals only helps so much when the racetrack refuses to behave like a conventional oval. Strategy, fuel mileage and restart craft have decided countless finishes on the long run down to Turn 1.
Solar panels and second acts
Pocono has also carved out an unusual identity off the track. In 2010 the raceway switched on a large solar farm built on land near the circuit, an installation that made it one of the most prominent renewable-energy projects in professional sports at the time. The panels generate enough electricity to power the facility, with surplus energy flowing back into the local grid. It was a characteristically independent move by a family-owned track looking for ways to control costs and stand out. The same spirit shows in how the facility is used between race weekends: driving experiences, track days, camping and community events keep the property busy through the Pennsylvania summer. The surrounding Pocono Mountains region is a long-established vacation area, and the raceway leans into that, promoting itself as a destination where the campground atmosphere is as much a part of the weekend as the racing.
Racing the triangle
Ask drivers about Pocono and you hear the same themes: it is a compromise you can never fully win. The Tunnel Turn punishes any car that is loose, the flat Turn 3 exposes any car that will not rotate, and the run onto the frontstretch matters more than almost anything else because the straight is so long. Getting Turn 3 right can be worth several car lengths by the time the field reaches Turn 1. Veterans talk about patience, about giving up a little in one corner to gain more in another, and about how the track surface and the mountain weather can change the balance of a car from one hour to the next. It is a place where clever engineers and thoughtful drivers thrive, and where brute speed alone has never been enough.
Explore on the map
Pocono Raceway is just one point in the vast landscape of speedways, road courses and racing venues around the world. If this deep dive has given you a taste for exploring, open the interactive map and zoom in on Pennsylvania to see the triangle for yourself, then wander outward to discover the other circuits, ovals and racing landmarks mapped across the globe. Every venue has its own story, and the Tricky Triangle is proof that some of the best ones hide in the mountains.