The rumors that I've heard are that the track will be built Southeast of town not too far from the airport. They just built a huge new tollroad through this area, so makes sense from a planning standpoint. The bad news is this is not in the hill country. There is certainly opportunities for nice elevation changes, but not what I would dream of if I had my choice. This also makes it easier from a PR standpoint, since the nature lovers won't care about this undeveloped area. either way, it's a small trip from downtown. Close to a new, modern highway and has the best chance to actually get built, so I'm not complaining. I doubt it would cost more than $150m to build here, depending on the lavishness. Labor is very cheap here and you don't have to worry about unions driving the cost up.
For those of you who have not been here previously, a few notes. While there are not a ton of direct international flights into Austin, Houston and Dallas are only a short flight away and are hubs for Continental and American and between them, serve almost every International airline. Growing up in Houston, there is a huge connection between Texas and the Middle East. Considering a bunch of people used to fly their private planes in to just to hit some strip clubs, this could easily have the same draw. We are also easily accessible (relatively speaking) to most of Mexico, Central America, The Caribbean, All of North America and parts of South America. We host the SXSW Music/Interactive/Film festivals every year that draw hundreds of thousands of people from all across the globe, so we are used to putting on a good show for our guests. For that matter, you're more welcome here if you're from Norway than you would be if you're from New York.
We also have the Austin City Limits Music festival every October that has attendance around 150,000 over a three day weekend. The University of Texas is located here and we have one of the largest football stadiums in the world (102,000 capacity) that has sold out every game since 2000. Dell Computers is based here. Samsung, Motorola, AMD, Freescale, 3M, IBM, Apple and many other huge companies have large offices here. This town is super casual, but there is something for everyone. I can wear shorts and flip-flops into even the nicest restaurants.
I'll think of more to add later on, but that's a good start.
The more I think about it though, the more sense it makes. I recall reading somewhere that, statistically, Austin is one of the most highly educated cities in the U.S.; certainly runs counter to any "redneck" rap. Also, Austin is geographically smack in the middle of the NASCAR belt so it's quite possible that the race could generate some new U.S. fans -- out of initial curiosity if nothing else.