The National Hot Rod Association announced yesterday that the 2018 Mello Yello Drag Racing Series tour would once again visit Dinwiddie, Virginia’s Virginia Motorsports Park. This event will be held on the weekend that the Summernationals were to be held on. That race was discontinued with it was announced that Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey would be ceasing drag racing operations long before the event’s scheduled date. This is a return to the venue for the NHRA who has contested national events at the track in years past.
The track was recently purchased by well known PDRA racer Tommy Franklin and his family. In the realm of “one man’s tragedy is another man’s opportunity” it doesn’t get much clearer in the world of drag racing. We understand that Franklin was communicating with NHRA shortly after the Englishtown news broke and the parties were able to get the whole situation figured out and the NHRA announcement (linked below) came yesterday.
VMP has hosted divisional races for both the IHRA and NHRA as well as national events for both sanctions. Interestingly one of the bleacher sections (we believe the section shown on the right hand side of the track in the satellite image below) was sold to New England Dragway in Epping, NH a couple of years ago to handle the increased seating capacity needs of that track.
Franklin and his staff will be hustling to get the facility primed up and ready for action. There’s lot of pieces to put into place to get not only the facility ready but also all of the other infrastructure like ticketing and operational stuff that you don’t really think about as a non-track operator. We’re looking forward to the event!
So the NHRA will be back in Virginia from June 8th through the 10th this year. If you live in the area and want to get a snoot full of nitro, now’s your chance.
Link: NHRA.com announcement of VMP returning to national event schedule
Actually a great choice. Happy about this one. Very happy for the Franklin family
This track is actually closer than Charlotte for me. Might finally go to a NHRA event again.