11/20/2025
An Ode to Pitt Race by J.G. Pasterjak:
“Always Sad to Say Another Goodbye” by J.G. Pasterjak (Grassroots Motorsports Magazine December 2025)
You’ve certainly heard, read or even posted a social media lament that yet another track has succumbed to Progress. By the time you read this, it’s very likely that the final motorsports event ever, will have taken place at Pitt Race in Wampum, Pennsylvania, about 40 minutes north of Pittsburgh.
If you’re expecting a rousing pep talk or a battle cry against future situations like this, well, I don’t know what to tell you. There’s not a lot of good news or hope wrapped up in this story when it comes to our world. But maybe just having a place to work out some of the feels is important in moments like this.
I had never been to Pitt Race prior to attending the Tire Rack Ultimate Track Car Challenge/SCCA Time Trial Nationals there in September, and I kicked myself for that decision from my very first session. The facility itself is (well, was), lovely, and the track--although a little bit of a cheese grater on tires—was challenging and fun. Like lots of fun: cool elevation changes, a tricky mix of corner shapes, options to attack, places to be patient.
It really had everything you could want in a ribbon of asphalt, with the ancillary facilities to match. As much as I enjoyed my first trip, I was really looking forward to my second trip, when time and reflection would give me the perspective to really take some swings at a few of the trickier segments.
But, yeah, not gonna happen.
A lot of talk I’ve seen online has justified the sale of the seemingly thriving facility to what is purported to be a data center, as “people who own stuff can do whatever they want with it, and they don’t owe you anything.” And yes, that is true. But another thing can also be true, and that’s that the people who derived joy—and in many cases their livelihoods—from that thing can also be justified in their anger and disappointment over the loss of that hub of their culture.
The disappearance of Pitt Race is a loss of a road course, a top—notch autocross and drift facility, a driving school, as well as the numerous motorsport—oriented businesses based at and around the track. It was the epicenter of many forms of motorsport in the region. But yeah, at least now we get a place that will make it easier to place AI—aided sports bets from our Wi-Fi enabled dishwashers. Cool.
I’m also at a bit of a loss to figure out how a data center benefits the local economy—which could absolutely use some benefitting—as much as an active race track. OpenAI’s million plus square-feet data center in Abilene, Texas, is expected have around, wait for it, 100 full time employees. The average Walmart employs about 300 people, and when you’re using Walmart as your “here’s the better thing” comparison, you know you’re in trouble.
The local folks I met near the track were, to a soul, kind and welcoming, while they had every right to be anything but. The industries that built that region, like coal and steel and coke (the mineral fuel kind, not the crisp refreshing soda or the Peruvian bo**er sugar kind), have all been largely offshored or obsoleted, and unless HBO radically expands the “Task/”Mare of Easttown” cinematic universe and turns the whole place into a huge production studio, there’s not a lot on the horizon to get the area looking like anything other than a Springsteen video.
And erasing a local business hub that actually brings in out-of-the-area and out-of-the-state dollars on the reg, in favor of a data center where 100 underpaid locals will toil away, oiling the gears of their faceless robot overlords, probably isn’t a great answer.
This is probably the part where I should say something like, “Support your local motorsports facility,” and, “Be a good steward of the sport”, or some other rah-rah bu****it. But the real situation is that guys with billions of dollars gave someone millions of dollars so they could add even more zeros to their bottom line, and ultimately it will benefit a few people very much instead of benefitting a lot of people a little less. It’s hard to compete with that type of financial scale.
So, I guess I’ll say that you should support your local track and be a good steward of the sport because it will make you happy in whatever time you have left before the AI goblins inevitably mow it down to expand their silicon brains a little further. Ultimately, we’ll save a few, and we’ll treasure those. And maybe one day, a forward-thinking city counsel or county zoning board will recognize the long-term soft benefits of a quality, accessible motorsport facility over the easy money of a resource-intensive bit farm.
Here's hoping…
