Mid Ohio's Old-School Charm Is Unbeatable

Before teams start moving their race cars into the garages at Mid Ohio, someone has to clean all of the bird shit off of the workbenches. This sure as hell ain’t the air conditioned and LED lit garage of an FIA Grade 1 track. The Midwest’s best race track is a romanticized vision straight out of the 1960s when it was built. While some have called for the circuit to have its facilities modernized, I’m inclined to argue that it’s just fine the way it is. The track is still a magnificent display of driver talent and technical prowess, why change now?

Photo: Bradley Brownell

When you drive in to Mid Ohio, you’re met with acres of flowing corn fields. Ohio is nowhere, and you’re in the middle of it. The hilly part that they built the race track on would have been a bit difficult to farm anyway, so it’s probably better that they built a world-class natural flowing race course there for cars and motorcycles instead of more corn. The benefit of building in farm country is that there aren’t a bunch of developments way out here that can complain about the noise. Wait a decade or so and there probably will be, but for now it’s safe.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

The parking lot is just a wide open field. This, too, could have been corn. While I might say it would be good to get rid of some of the bigger bumps because my sports car is too low to navigate them, otherwise I’m okay with this. Parking thousands of cars in a single area isn’t easy, and I vastly prefer this remains a grassy hill than a giant asphalt parking lot. This track already has drainage issues during Ohio’s many summer showers, so if you compounded that with a huge parking lot, it would get nasty real quick.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

The garages? Yeah, they’re just regular garage stalls with wood workbenches and a couple overhead fluorescent lights. What more do you want? Come on, this isn’t F1. Don’t be so pretentious.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

The track does have a few grandstands around with some great views, but most of the good places to sit are just hillsides. Bring a blanket and a picnic and make a day of it. You can definitely bring a 10×10 pop-up for some shade, but I prefer to just sit under the trees.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

Okay, I’ll admit there are some things about Mid Ohio that could use fixing and replacing. This fence is probably older than me, and it’s no longer functional. I appreciate the broken gate is still chained closed, though.

Photo: Bradley Brownell

Mid Ohio has hosted some of the best racing series on the planet in its time, and some incredible drivers have put in fast laps here. Alex Palou’s pole time for the IndyCar race this weekend was nine-thousandths of a second off the track record, so the course is still as fast as it has ever been, and the race this weekend wasn’t necessarily the most exciting thing in the world, but there were two guys up front giving it their all, and that’s kind of what old-school racing is. Does it deserve to stand on the same level as its contemporaries like Spa Francorchamps or Laguna Seca? Probably not, but this track is at least as good as Watkins Glen, VIR, or Lime Rock. Don’t fight me on this.