About a half-hour west of Disney World in central Florida, USA International Speedway sits just off an interstate highway connecting Orlando and the Tampa area.

The Lakeland, Fla., speedway doesn’t stage racing on a weekly basis, but things aren’t nearly as quiet around the three-quarter mile oval as you might expect.

In addition to playing host to several regional stock-car and late-model racing events, USA International is one of a number of tracks around the country where teams in NASCAR’s top series frequently bring their cars to test.

On a Tuesday afternoon in early February, for example, MBV Motorsports had its No. 10 Pontiacs on the relatively flat oval, trying various combinations of shock absorbers and springs that might be used at different tracks during the season.

“It’s a great place to go test,” said Johnny Benson, the team’s driver. “We don’t necessarily go there because it’s going to be good for one particular track, but we can work through a lot of stuff.”

As Benson said, USA International doesn’t really match up particularly well with any one track where Winston Cup cars race during the season. It’s flatter than Richmond, which also is a three-quarter mile track. It has longer straightaways than some of the tracks around a mile in length, and its turns are tighter than some of the 1.5-mile intermediate tracks.

The reason USA International and other tracks like Greenville-Pickens in South Carolina and Caraway Speedway in Asheboro, N.C., fill their calendars with testing dates for teams is that they’re not part of the NASCAR rotation.

Winston Cup teams get only seven official test dates per season at the tracks the circuit visits during the season. Trips to places like USA International or Greenville-Pickens don’t count against that total.

When a team does take an official test, it has only two days to conduct the test. If rain washes out an entire day, the team may be able to persuade NASCAR to let it stay a third day. But it has to seek permission for that extra day. There are no such limits on tests at tracks like USA International.

“If you only have two days, sometimes you might think of something you would like to try on the car,” Benson said. “But if you know it’s going to take an hour or two to change over the car, you might not want to use up that much time if it’s an official test.

“When we go to a place like Lakeland, we could stay four days if that’s what we wanted to do. You can be more relaxed and get your stuff done. We can go there as much as we want and stay as long as we want.”

There are other things the Lakeland track has going for it. It was chilly, in Florida terms, on the February day Benson’s team was there to test. But it was certainly warmer than it was in most of the United States that day.

USA International has also spent more than $1 million in renovations since Bob Brooks, the chief executive officer of Hooters restaurants, bought the facility and turned it into the flagship venue for his United Speed Alliance Racing ProCup series.

The USAR opened its 2002 season at the track and will hold one of its late-season championship series races there in the fall. Because the track hosts such relatively high-level competition, its racing surface and other facilities are maintained and kept in good condition.

Tracks like USA International benefit from the testing it plays host to as well. A team pays a daily fee of around $2,500 to rent the track. Early and late in the calendar year, when weather elsewhere sends more teams to central Florida for their noncharged tests, the track is in use as many as 15 testing days per month.