I recently heard some really sad news about the closing of a dragstrip. Thankfully (I guess), it's not one of Southern California's few racing facilities, as we here on the West Coast truly can't afford to see another track go away (I'm not talking about the nostalgic dragstrips of yesteryear; in the past 10 years we've seen two quarter miles [Carslbad and Los Angeles County Raceway] be shut down and uprooted for strip malls and rock quarries.
The powers that be have ceased operations at one of my most-favorite tracks in the country. I'll tell you which one, after the jump...
I visited Memphis Motorsports Park for the first time back in 1993, when I rolled down to Blues Town for the innaugural Fastest Street Car Shootout--the first-ever, doorslammer, heads-up drag race for outlaw-style "street cars." This event literally was the race that set the stage for sanctions such as NMCA, PSCA, ORSCA and even NMRA to come about, and grow.
The trip to Memphis was awesome. Beal Street and its great music, food and drinks, and...the track. Memphis was the first track I had ever been to that had a cool "bridge" that spanned the width of the dragstrip (just behind the burnout box) where you could stand and watch cars run down the track. Back then, I had no idea I would be doing what I now do for a living, but today I recognize that bridge as a bitchin' place to take race photos, and I actually had a chance to catch a few shots from up there a few years ago, when Memphis Motorsports Park was one of the tracks we hit during my Drag Week excursion with Paul and Ronda Svinicki in 2008.
I haven't spoken with anyone for the "official" word on the track's closing, but the news is blazing around the Internet (blogs, forums, e-mails) so fiercely that I'm willing to bet the farm that it's a done deal. Apparently, an attempt to sell the track went bad (potential buyer had second thoughts) and the current owner opted to just shut things down. It's sad, because not only do "we" no longer have a place to race. More importantly (a LOT more), some folks now don't have a place to work! I'll spare the politics and my feelings about US unemployment, but I hate to hear about this kind of thing beacuse of the negative impact it has on good people.
Maybe (hopefully) there will be some eleventh-hour decision or receipt of major funding that will spare Memphis Motorsports Park. It sucks to think that such a cool place will sit idly for 2010, and that racers (local, NMCA, NHRA, etc) in the Mid-South are left without a really good facility to race at.