The grand re-opening of the newly-reconfigured Talladega Gran Prix Raceway (TGPR), a series of in-house track days scheduled for January 6-8, has been canceled due to weather. “Construction fell behind because of the weather, and the originally planned track days were postponed because the run-off area is just a mud pit,” said Ed Bargy, who organizes track days and conducts riding schools at TGPR, a track he designed. “The paving is done: The track, the paddock, pit road, the access roads. But the run-off areas are still loose gravel from all the grading. The rain soaked into it, and we’ve got mud. It’s almost ankle-deep/knee-deep mud. So if somebody ran off, we wouldn’t be able to move the bike, paramedics couldn’t get to you if you were hurt. It would just be a mess. It would be unsafe.” The silver lining, Bargy said, was the delay would give the five-week-old new pavement more time to cure before vehicles use it. All events scheduled at TGPR in January 2007 will be re-scheduled, and the first official event at the track is now expected to be a WERA Sportsman series regional race event February 10-11. TGPR closed halfway through 2006 in order to reconfigure its 1.33-mile road course, a change required due to construction on the highway bordering the property reducing the available run-off room of some turns. The length of the reconfigured course will remain at 1.33 miles, but the new layout will be at least one second faster per lap, according to Bargy.