Instead of the race track being inundated with fancy frocks and suave suits it has been overtaken by workers and earthmoving equipment.

The Port Macquarie Cup did not run this year due to track upgrade work made possible with a $3.7 million grant.

Chief executive officer of the Port Macquarie Race Club Michael Bowman said it was "short term pain for long term gain".

The meetings that would normally have been run during this time at Port Macquarie have been abandoned but other tracks on the Mid-North Coast have been given extra meetings to make up for those that we lost.

"There is no real benefit of transferring our race meetings somewhere else so the decision was made early on to abandon any meets we would have had," Mr Bowman said.

"Some of the other tracks like Taree and Tuncurry have received a couple extra meetings to make up for it.

"Not all of the meetings have been replaced but at least most of them have."

In the meantime work will continue on the Port Macquarie track and Mr Bowman said it was relatively on schedule.

"We had a bit of rain in November which caused a set back of a couple of weeks," he said.

"But they've been pretty busy and it shouldn't be too hard to make that time up if the weather stays fine."

Mr Bowman said the works are expected to be finished by May-June 2016 and Port Macquarie will then have arguably the best track between Brisbane and Sydney.

"That's the aim for sure to have one of the premier tracks around," Mr Bowman said.

"Technically it will be designed to shed 180ml of water an hour. That means other tracks that might get washed out can transfer their race day here."