Closed, for Sale, Rescued: The Fall America's Local Dragstrips Got a Reality Check

On Aug. 17, Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania posted on Facebook that it was closed, effective immediately, with its racing schedule suspended for "strategic refocusing, restructuring, and regrouping." It had been less than a year since the IHRA announced at the PRI Show that it had acquired the historic track, Dragzine reported. Soon after, a bracket race promoter posted a video canceling his event there. No reopening date was given.

That was the start of a strange season for the places hot rodders actually race. By October, a group of tracks tied to the IHRA's former owner had been listed for auction, a family-run eighth-mile in Alabama was for sale, and a Florida group was pitching a racing resort built in sugarcane fields. Then, on Oct. 23, came a piece of good news: Piedmont Dragway in North Carolina, torn up and silent, had new owners who planned to bring it back.

How the IHRA got here

To understand the fall, you have to go back about 18 months. Darryl Cuttell bought the International Hot Rod Association and, as Dragzine put it, went on an absolute tear, buying nearly a dozen facilities. The vision was big. The results were not. Dragzine described a revolving door of experienced staff, unsustainable payouts and a revenue model that did not work, ending with event cancellations and the collapse of the IHRA's entire professional tour. Even a million-dollar IHRA Triple Crown finale that Maple Grove was supposed to host was canceled.

Here is the wrinkle Dragzine was careful to point out: Maple Grove was never owned by Cuttell's track company, Darana Motorsports Holdings. Its closure belongs in the same chapter of the story, but not the same column on the balance sheet.

Tracks that kept the lights on

While the national series fell apart, the tracks owned by Darana kept running, and in August Dragzine went to find out whether the rumors about them were true. The rumors were wild, from tracks being turned into data centers to closures "within days." The managers said it was business as usual. According to Dragzine, the operating Darana tracks were West Salem, Hebron, Milan, Darana Motorsports Park, Xenia and Empire Dragway, with Virginia Motorsports Park leased. Piedmont, also owned by Darana, had been closed for repairs.

"We're all individual tracks owned by the same person. All of our profits are individual. Our profits support our track," Mary Anne Matcham, general manager at Darana Dragway West Salem, told Dragzine. Each track runs under its own LLC, she said.

Sam Lance, the West Salem track manager, explained the economics that every local racer should understand. "It costs $1,000 to just pop the lights on, and doesn't include the costs to keep them running," he told Dragzine, adding that off-road diesel for prep equipment was still $4 a gallon. "There isn't unlimited money behind these tracks, we have to run them the right way and have to show a profit like any other legitimate business," Lance said.

Then the auction

On Oct. 6, Dragzine reported that numerous Cuttell-owned facilities, including GALOT, Piedmont, Milan, National Trail Raceway and Dragway 42, were listed for sale on the auction site Tranzon. The tracks that had kept operating through the IHRA's collapse now had uncertain futures as racing facilities.

That is the part that should worry anyone who races on a Saturday night. A dragstrip is a strange piece of real estate: a long, flat strip of land, often near growing towns, with a lot of value to someone who does not care about elapsed times. Once one gets sold for something else, it rarely comes back.

The family track for sale

Not every sale is a crisis. In Baileyton, Alabama, about 32 miles south of Huntsville, the Good Time Drag Strip has been running since 1966, Dragzine reported. Owner Russ Easterwood, the grandson of founder Jack Walker and the driver of the Old Tater Hauler wheelstander truck, listed it for $1.4 million so he can focus on a new business. His stated goal is to find a buyer who will keep racing there.

The listing reads like a checklist of what keeps a small track alive: new concrete in 2014, a pull-through burnout box in 2016, concrete barriers in 2018, paved pits in 2019, Accutime timing and LED scoreboards in 2020, a 1,200-foot asphalt shutdown in 2023 and a new two-story tower in 2024. Easterwood said racing would continue at full capacity while he looks for a buyer, and that he would consider trades.

Building from scratch in Florida

South Florida knows what losing a track feels like. The RPM Group, led by Tim Moceri and president Erik Bentley, spent a long time trying to buy the former Palm Beach International Raceway in Jupiter and failed, Dragzine's Susan Wade reported. So they are trying to build one instead, on roughly 500 acres of sugarcane land near Clewiston in Hendry County, starting with a dragstrip.

Moceri's pitch is that old-style tracks will not survive. "You can't just build this hole-in-the-wall, dingy racetrack anymore and expect people to show up and have fun," he told Dragzine. His vision is a full motorsports destination with shops, restaurants and car culture alongside the racing. RPM, he said, stands for Restoring and Preserving Motorsports. "We cannot do this alone," Moceri said.

Piedmont comes back

The best news of the season came in late October. Piedmont Dragway had hosted racing for nearly 70 years before it was shut down and torn up for improvements that appeared to stall, Dragzine reported. Then Greg Loflin and Terry Ferrell, whose companies include Loflin Fabrication and TKM Performance, bought it. Former PDRA owner Bob Harris is part of the team, with Rick Moore as general manager working alongside Liz Vance.

Harris said a contract had already been signed for the concrete work the track needs, and new lighting and timing systems are planned. No reopening date has been set, but the plan is to race again next year.

What it means for the rest of us

Hot rodding has always needed a place to prove it. Street cars, bracket cars, gassers and no-prep rides all start at local tracks like these, not at national events. This fall showed how fragile those places are when ownership overreaches, and how much it takes, from $1,000 just to light the track to new concrete and timing systems, to keep one going.

It also showed that people will still step up. A grandson trying to sell to the right buyer, a fabrication shop owner buying a shuttered strip and a Florida group trying to build from dirt are all betting the same thing: that there are enough racers and fans who want somewhere to go on Saturday night. The best way to prove them right is to show up.