A race track (or 'racetrack', 'racing track' or 'racing circuit') is a purpose-built facility for racing of animals (e.g. horse racing or greyhound racing), vehicles, or athletes. A race track may also feature grandstands or concourses. Some motorsport tracks are called speedways.
A racetrack is a permanent facility or building. Racecourse is an alternate term for a horse racing track, found in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Race tracks built for bicycles are known as velodromes. Circuit is a common abbreviation for racetrack, given the usual circuitous configuration of most race tracks, allowing races to occur over several laps.
A race course, as opposed to a racecourse, is a term for non-permanent tracks for sports, particularly road running, water sports, road racing or rallying. Many sports usually held on racetracks can also occur on temporary but purpose built tracks, such as the Monaco Grand Prix in Formula One.
Read more about Race Track: History, Surfaces, Configurations, Motorsport
Famous quotes containing the words race and/or track:
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn’t
quicken his trotting
across the track into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)