Raleigh Speedway (originally Southland Speedway) was a one-mile (1.6 km) oval race track which opened in 1952 one mile north of Raleigh, North Carolina in Wake County. It was the second superspeedway ever built (the first being the 1.366 mile Darlington Raceway at Darlington, South Carolina). It was also the first lighted superspeedway and the first track on which NASCAR sanctioned night-time races. The track had a long and narrow shape, like a paper clip, with the front and back straights about 500 feet apart and the straightaways about 1,850 feet long. The turns were banked at 16° and the straightaways were flat.