What kind of pictures can a Photojournalist take that will bring in the kind of money needed to build a track from scratch?
What do you mean by a 1/2 mile strip? Also, most of the tracks throughout the US and Europe have homepages and probably have track maps. If not they will send them to you for a small fee and some will for free.
Is it your desire to build in the Cinci area? In most of my reading and communications with racing people it is easier to purchase an existing track and change it to what you want. Existing tracks are already zoned for such unless they are operating on a Grandfather Clause. As stated talk to the Zoning Commission and the sanctioning bodies for advice.
I know you said that money is not an issue but tracks like Loudon New Hampshire has already had well over 100 million sunk in to it in the last 10 years. Road Atlanta has had close to that put into it in the last 5 years I believe. Just putting things into some perspective.
I assume that you are talking a nice road course since you are asking us SBW people. You need very large run off areas in line with the braking zones and corners. If it were me I would shoot for about 3-3.5 miles per lap. Most of the race tracks in the US are in fairly rural areas due to the zoning laws.
I need to stop typing now. I could go on for hours.

It has been a dream of mine to design a racing facility layout for a guy who says "money is no object".
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John
"If Harley made an airplane... would you fly in it?"