San Antonio Had 1 Of The Most Intriguing Racetracks in the US

Brooklyn, Monte Carlo, Toronto... these are home to some of the most iconic street circuits in the world of racing. For a time San Antonio had its own racetrack in the streets called the San Antonio Street Circuit. It ran for only 4 years between 1987-1990 & there were only 4 races held, all being the ISMA Camel GT Championships.

There does exist some footage of the races on YouTube (like a full broadcast of the 1987 race & a mostly complete broadcast of the 1988 race), as well as official achieved photos of the covers for the programs of all 4 races.

There's also onboard footage so you can actually see what the track looked like from the inside of a racecar. This was taken from Jorge Mendoza's car in 1990.

So why exactly did it fail?

Well in a YouTube video by a user called TyDye RacingGaming, he went into detail on the history of the course & explained in great detail WHY the track failed. In a brief summary:

the track was still in the process of being built during its first race,
the track was narrow leading to cars running into each other,
& despite having good attendance numbers, the lack of sponsorship support meant the track couldn't continue after 1990.

Of course this wouldn't be the end of racing in San Antonio; they would have the San Antonio Raceway open for drag races. But as for having a street circuit, that wouldn't happen again.

This wasn't the only time that Texas had a racing circuit in the streets; Dallas held the 1984 Grand Prix in Formula 1. That was the only time they would have Formula 1 race in Dallas.

I'm not sure if we'll ever seen another street race quite like this in the future but... you never know.