Dan River Grand Prix opens, brings unique challenge to go-kart racers

DANVILLE — It wasn’t the big grand opening that will be seen some time in early November, but owner Ken Grammer was equally as happy to see customers come and go Tuesday afternoon at Dan River Grand Prix Indoor Karting Center for its soft opening.

What the day did provide was to help Grammer and his staff get a feel from those customers of how the track felt and help work out any kinks that will be worked out prior to the big opening, especially with the interest that has already generated for the course.

“That was key element in bringing the center here — basically, we’re very centrally located between Lynchburg, Greensboro, South Boston and Martinsville,” Grammer said. “From a demographic standpoint, we do know from the feedback that we’re getting from people following us both on our website and on Facebook, that we are generating a lot of interest from those areas outside of Danville.”

The track, 1,400 feet in length, features a couple of long straightaways and several technical corners that Grammer said would be fun for novices and challenging to experienced drivers who are looking to developed their skills before making the jump to outdoor karting. The track is also one of the longest on the east coast and the only indoor course open in the immediate area. A popular indoor karting track in Greensboro, N.C., closed earlier this year.

“(It’s a) combination of a fun track for the arriving customer and when we have someone … with pretty good karting experience, we wanted to offer them some challenging turns,” Grammer said. “What we were able to do is bring our experience of going to various road racing and karting tracks around the country and try to mimic some of those features of our favorite turns.”

The turns, Grammer said, have some of the characteristics of Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca, Road America, Mid-Ohio and VIR. While the corners are flat indoors and do not consist of the elevation changes or banking found at the popular road courses, they are all different and present its unique challenge for the driver.

Grammer also said that the new indoor track will help those looking to advance in the karting ranks, especially with a quality outdoor go-kart track at VIR not far away.

“I hesitate to us being an alternative to VIR and their karting program — what we are is an addition to,” Grammer said. “There are a lot of people that don’t understand what kart racing is all about. It’s an entry way into professional motorsports, in general. Indoor karting in Europe, everybody who goes into professional racing starts with indoor karting, they move to the outdoor karting and then they move to the professional … cars. We’re definitely a missing link and what I see as an enhancement to VIR’s offerings.”

Dan River Grand Prix, which uses Electra Motorsports karts, also is open as late as 10 or 11 p.m. most nights and offers alternatives for those in town for races at VIR and Martinsville Speedway, as well as those living in Danville.

“That’s certainly our main objective is to be here for a long,” Grammer said. “When we were looking at what we wanted to achieve, certainly key among our goals, was to be not only a viable business for our own objectives, but to be a positive anchor for the community and give not only our local community something to do, but the visitors that come to VIR an opportunity to do something here rather than going to Raleigh, going to Greensboro.”