Ralph Sanchez, Founder of Major Speedway, Dies at 64
Ralph Sanchez, president of Miami Motorsports, at the Homestead Motorsports Complex in Homestead, Fla., in 1995. Credit Jeffrey Boan/Associated Press Ralph Sanchez, a Cuban-born businessman who brought auto racing to the streets of Miami in the 1980s and later built a major speedway in a city devastated by Hurricane Andrew, died on Monday at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 64.
His death, after a series of illnesses, was confirmed by officials of the track he founded, Homestead-Miami Speedway.
In 1983, Mr. Sanchez, a real estate developer who had done some racing himself, decided that Miami, particularly its Latin American immigrants, would be receptive to an international sports car race. He persuaded city officials to let him organize the Grand Prix of Miami, which sent high-powered Porsches, Jaguars and Corvettes screaming along Biscayne Boulevard and other public streets.
Mr. Sanchez was forced to relocate the race several times, and eventually began a frustrating search for a permanent home for his racing events. That changed after Hurricane Andrew struck Homestead, near the Florida Keys, in 1992, destroying 47,000 homes about 90 percent of its housing and 8,000 businesses.
The city, which the Cleveland Indians had abandoned as a spring training site because of the hurricane, welcomed the speedway project. And the proximity of what was then Homestead Air Force Base meant that complaints about racecar noise would be negligible.
Ground was broken for the 65,000-seat Homestead-Miami Speedway a year after the hurricane, and the track opened in November 1995 with a successful Nascar race. Soon it was a site for IndyCar races and sports car events. With its tropical pastel colors, a row of palms along the backstretch, and amenities not seen at most automobile racetracks (like tile in the restrooms), the track was a showpiece in itself.
Today it hosts more than 280 events a year, including concerts. Nascar ends its season there in November with a weekend of races that can determine as many as three champions.
Although Mr. Sanchez and his investor partners provided the impetus to build the track, the facility is municipally owned. Mr. Sanchez owned a share of the land as well as the lease. He sold his interest to two publicly traded companies in the track-owning business in the late 1990s. One of them, International Speedway Corporation, controlled by the France family, which runs Nascar, is now the tracks sole operator.
As a child, Mr. Sanchez came to the United States alone as part of the Operation Pedro Pan airlift, in which more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, some as young as 6, were flown out of Cuba from December 1960 to October 1962 after the countrys Communist takeover. In the United States, he spent time in an orphanage until his parents arrived and were reunited with him.
He is survived by his wife, Lourdes; a son, Rafael; and a daughter, Patricia Sanchez Abril.
The track was not Mr. Sanchezs only major contribution to auto racing. Believing that he needed a marquee driver to help promote one of his first races, he persuaded Emerson Fittipaldi, a former world champion from Brazil, to come out of retirement.
Mr. Fittipaldi had quit racing in disgust after trying unsuccessfully to run his own Formula One team, but the Grand Prix of Miami rekindled his interest in racing in the United States. He went on to win the Indianapolis 500 in 1989 and 1993.
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