Home of the Merced County Fair since 1931, a 0.2-mile dirt oval was operational at this Californian fairground in 1946. Merced Fairgrounds Raceway was an extended half-mile track by the time Herb Thomas gave Carl Kiekhaefer’s Chrysler team its 16th successive NASCAR victory on 3 June 1956. Merced was reconfigured as a baked clay 0.375-mile oval in 1991 which claims to be the “smoothest dirt track in the Central Valley of California” today.
