Unhinged: The First Day Of Drag Racing At Beech Bend – Spring Has Officially Arrived In Kentucky


Unhinged: The First Day Of Drag Racing At Beech Bend – Spring Has Officially Arrived In Kentucky

Forget the calendar. I don’t care what it says, when drag racing kicks off in Bowling Green, it’s Spring. And I say that because the fine folks over at NCM have run Track-X events where there was still ice on the race course, so they don’t count. This weekend was the opener for Beech Bend Raceway, and I couldn’t wait to get out there for one reason: during the off season, every bit of asphalt, from the entrance at the perimeter fence to all of the pit parking, had received a fresh layer of asphalt, drag strip itself included. For all of last week I was jamming so that I could have time on the weekend to break out the camera, smell some race fuel and burnt rubber, and hear the song of our people reverberating off of the tower.

Saturday’s test-and-tune session was a bust. A lot of the local boys wanted to come out and have a rowdy old time at the track and I was ready to join them, but stepping out onto my front porch early in the morning told the tale: it was damp, cold and still raining with no sign of letting up anytime soon. By mid-morning the track officials had cancelled the day, so instead of burnt rubber I got to smell potting soil, Miracle-Gro and the stink of onions as I checked off “lawn and garden maintenance” off of my honey-do list. By mid-afternoon the weather had broke into a sunny day, and with no clouds on the horizon, I prepared.Beech Bend Test And Tune Mar 16_4Sunday afternoon, as I pulled through the ticket booth at the strip, I could tell that there was an energy at the track. A simple test-and-tune doesn’t have that many car trailers in the pit area at Beech Bend, but there they were, filling the main pit and extending down along the shutoff area of the strip. The sounds of pissed-off V8s, awakened from their winter slumber, drowning out the announcer’s voice…oh, yes, this was missed. There were dragsters running against back-halved Novas. Fox body Mustangs and third-gen Camaros were everywhere. There were freaks, like a evil little Pinto and a wildly painted box-top Fairmont. A 1976 Chevelle sedan that was the perfect combination of professional racer and rotted-out parts car was parked near the unbelievably wicked 2JZ-powered Lexus SC300 that Dynosty Tuning brought out to shake down. The fence along the starting line was filled with bystanders. Junior Dragsters waited next to the tower, kids suited up and ready to go. And then there was the Buick Wildcat that was just sitting in the staging lanes, looking less like a car ready to make a pass and more like the car that was trolling for suckers about forty years ago.Beech Bend Test And Tune Mar 16_24

The season is on in Kentucky, and everybody is ready to come out and play this year.

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One thought on “Unhinged: The First Day Of Drag Racing At Beech Bend – Spring Has Officially Arrived In Kentucky

  1. jerry z

    I can’t wait for the season opener in 3 weeks at the new Galot Motorsports Park in Dunn, NC! They have been rebuilding the track for 2 yrs and now looks killer!

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