One year ago, Virginia’s Dominion Raceway hosted a Modified race for the first time in the track’s history. The SMART Modified Tour’s Craig Murto 99 was the first race for Modifieds at the Thornburg, Virginia 4/10-mile oval that opened in 2016, but it was apparent from the first practice laps that Dominion Raceway was made for Modified racing. It’s just that nobody had realized it until just then.

“It has a good size overall,” explained full-time SMART Modified Tour competitor and 2000 NASCAR Cup Series champion, Bobby Labonte. “It has enough banking to keep your speeds up, and the grip level is high enough that you can. And you can run pretty hard without much fall-off.”

Dominion Raceway has 14-degrees of corner banking, with nine degrees of banking on the straightaways. That makes for a pretty fast race track. Add in that the banking is still only six years old with a ton of grip, plus the big 15-inch tires that the ground-pounders use, and that’s a recipe for high speeds.

“Dominion Raceway was built for Modifieds,” said 2021 champion Burt Myers. “I knew from the moment I saw the place it was where the SMART Modified Tour need to be. I love it.”

Myers echoed Labonte’s sentiments about the high banking, high speeds, and high grip levels. 

He also added that one of his favorite things about Dominion is that, since it was built so recently, it’s a state-of-the-art short track, which is something short trackers don’t usually get to experience. Dominion has a beautiful bar and grill in its main tower at the top of the grandstands, and a beautiful gift shop as well.

Myers finished second in the SMART Tour’s inaugural trip to Dominion last year to Matt Hirschman. Jason Myers finished third, Tom Buzze finished fourth, and Danny Bohn completed the top five. 

One driver who has yet to turn a lap at Dominion Raceway in a Modified is Brandon Ward. But, Ward said that everything he has heard from his fellow competitors has him excited to hit the track on Saturday afternoon.

“From what I hear, the race track has lots of grip,” said Ward. “Most of the tracks we go to it’s all about saving tires. I think the fact that you can use all the power that these cars have, and race hard the entire race will result in a very good show for the fans.”

Speaking of the fans, you can tune into tomorrow’s SMART Modified Tour Old Dominion Classic 99 at 5 p.m. ET to catch every lap of SMART Modified Tour competition, plus the finale for the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship battle between Layne Riggs and Peyton Sellers, live on FloRacing.