Mike Hembree

Special for USA TODAY Sports

GERMANTOWN, Wis. -- Van Walling’s nationwide search for "paper tracks" — venues dreamed but never built — found heavy hits in the New York/New Jersey area, a geographical point coveted by NASCAR.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was among those involved in fishing in the big NASCAR pond years ago when new tracks were popping up around the country. Walling’s research has uncovered several iterations of “Trump Speedway” in and around New York City.

“There was a whole bunch of ‘Trump’ superspeedways proposed in the 1990," Walling told USA TODAY Sports. "Everybody was alternately looking at sites in New York or New Jersey or Connecticut.”

Racing's just a dream at 'paper raceways'

In 1996, USA TODAY Sports reported that Trump planned Trump Motor Speedway as part of a hotel-restaurant-shopping complex in Bridgeport, Conn. But three years later, USA TODAY Sports reported that the sanctioning body was not sold on Trump's idea.

In March 1999, a month after Trump attended the Daytona 500, the New York Times reported that Trump had formed a partnership with Bill France Jr. - then the head of NASCAR, and ISC to build a speedway in the Catskill Mountains in either northern New Jersey or Connecticut.

That track was expected to cost up to $400 million and seat as many as 300,000, according to executives on both sides of the deal. There were also media mentions over the years of Trump speedways in Connecticut, New Jersey and Monticello, N.Y., all in the late 1990s.