MANSFIELD — Mansfield Speedway’s re-worked racing surface will face its first real test this weekend.

The Buckeye Outlaw Sprint Series and Fast on Dirt Series winged 410 sprint cars will roar into town for the Summer Sprint Car Opener on Friday and Saturday.

Track owner Matt Tifft and his team gave the .44-mile dirt oval off Crall Road a much-needed makeover after the World of Outlaws Late Model Series visited for the Blaster 57 Special late last month.

The track wasn’t up to snuff, Tifft said, forcing a de facto rebuild.

“We basically said we’re starting over,” Tifft said. “So we pulled all the new clay off and went down to the sub-surface to see what was going on down there.

“We treated that area first and then re-applied the new surface bit-by-bit.”

Tifft said when he bought the property last year it would be a work in progress. He knew not everything would be perfect when the green flag flew for the first time since 2019.

“It’s a non-stop learning process,” Tifft said. “You’re going to have hot, humid days and you’re going to have cold nights. You’re going to have rainy conditions and dry conditions.

“Those things all have an effect on the track.”

There also were underlying issues that needed to be addressed. Drainage tiles were destroyed and needed to be replaced.

“No matter how much we’re prepping and tilling and discing and watering on the surface, something is going on way down below,” Tifft said. “Until we dig down and see what’s happening, we’re never going to know.

“We had a few-week break so we decided to strip it down and see what was going on beneath the surface.”

Tifft and his team relied heavily on intel from race teams to address the problems.

“The good thing is we had enough driver feedback to see what was good and what was bad,” Tifft said. 

A former NASCAR Cup Series driver, Tifft even turned a few laps himself to get a feel for the racing surface. He got behind the wheel of Ashland native Ryan Markham’s back-up car during the Blaster 57 Special weekend.

“I was able to hop in Ryan Markham’s other car just to go out there … to feel what changes the track was going to need,” Tifft said. “Between that and getting all that feedback from some of the top drivers in the country, you start to get really granular about the changes.”

Tifft expects the track to improve as more data is collected.

“We’ll just try it out and get it a little bit better every time we run a race,” he said. “I want to make sure we get this right.”

Tickets to this week’s show are going fast. The first few events have been near-sellouts.

“We’re getting great support, not just from Richland County and the surrounding area, but from people coming in from around the state and from surrounding states,” Tifft said. “A lot of people have been intrigued about what is going on here.

“We’re the bright, new, shiny penny,” Tifft said. “Now the question is how do we keep it going?

“When you open, there’s going to be a huge crowd. When you host a national series, there’s going to be a really big crowd. Now we’re going to learn what a smaller race looks like.”