Recently, my wife Kerri and I spent a few days in Aruba with some friends of ours for a little R&R before race season gets cranked up and I become a ghost at the house. The island is an amazing place with an interesting arid climate, near constant breeze, and friendly populous that made it one of the best places we have ever visited. We had all kinds of fun seeing the local sights, drinking lots of local beer, and sucking up as much sand and sun as humanly possible while parked under grass huts on the beach. Oh, did I mention that they have a drag strip?

This island of just 69-square miles and 110,000 permanent residents has a full-on quarter mile strip which has been open and in operation since the early 1980s. Many of you likely know this already like I did but many of you likely do not. Drag racing is incredibly popular in the Caribbean and virtually every island down there has a strip.

When I knew we were going to visit the island I really wanted to visit the drag strip. I was hanging at 125 on my list of living and dead drag strips visited and I really waned to make it to 125 with the hopes of hitting 130 by the end of 2017. Thanks to the internet, I was able to make contact with Juan Werleman who works for the IHRA and has been a figure in the drag racing scene down there forever. He was gracious enough to take time out of his own life to scoop Kerri and I up at the hotel and bring us to the IHRA sanctioned Aruba International Raceway Park Palo Marga for a visit. He also took us to his race shop where there were five awesome cars to see from full tube chassis top sportsman machines to big block powered, steel bodied stuff. Oh, there was also a gnarly little turbocharged Honda in there as well.

The track is a lot of things but wide ain’t one of them. According to Juan it is basically at the minimum spec for an IHRA track to be at in order to meet the sanctioning rules. It is flat and it is long with a sand trap style run off at the very end. Of the interesting elements we saw, the covered garage areas were cool. Teams can use these and racers can actually build one of their own if they would like. As you will see, some are block, at least one is made from shipping containers, and they all provide some shade and respite from the island’s sun.

According to Juan the track sees both drag racing and drifting action. There were marks from burning tires in a few areas of the track where drifting has been allowed to happen and the strip itself had a thick cover of rubber from the previous season’s action.

Despite the small size of the island, the strip is nicely tucked back in an area by the entrance to the Arikok National Park. The government gave the land to the racers back in the 1980s told them that if they could build a track, that’s where it would be. Through hard work and craftiness, the track was built and it thrives to this day.

We often talk about how global a sport drag racing is but this is yet another actual illustration. It is also kind of amazing that there are entire states in the USA without a strip and yet these guys on an island of less than 70 square miles have a fine facility to race on.

Juan had a lot of pride in what the racers of Aruba have accomplished as well he should. The track holds a couple of large events every year as well as the normal programs one would expect from a facility. Racers in the Caribbean are adept at floating their cars around so it is not strange to see vehicles from different islands or even the USA at the track.

We loved the story that Juan told us about how they promote the place when a big race is coming soon. If they have jet cars or exhibition vehicles they have brought in, the cars and drivers tour the island’s schools and not only show off their stuff but hand the kids a free ticket! That really packs ’em in. Great stuff.

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