One of NASCAR's fastest tracks is in the Irish Hills

Down in the Irish Hills, just south of Brooklyn, sits Michigan International Speedway — a two-mile, D-shaped oval that’s one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR. The corners are wide and gently banked and the straightaways are long, which lets stock cars sweep through at around 200 miles an hour. On a big race weekend, tens of thousands of fans pour into Cambridge Township, and the little towns around the track fill right up.

The speedway opened in 1968 but nearly went broke in its first few years. The man who turned it around was racing legend Roger Penske, who bought it at a courthouse auction in 1973 and spent decades building it into a top-tier facility. Today it’s owned by NASCAR itself and still hosts major race weekends every summer. There’s even a nearby connection: its headline Cup race is named for the FireKeepers Casino, the Potawatomi tribe’s casino over in Calhoun County.