(Editor’s note: This story ran at the tail end of 2011 but since tracks across the country are opening again we thought we would run this piece a secnd time) – While there is still a fair amount of action left in the 2011 racing season, we’re a lot closer to the end than we are to the beginning. It has been interesting this year to see a number of high profile incidents  involving the preparedness or lack thereof of drag strips across the country. YellowBullet has been at the forefront of publicizing these incidents, and for good reason. Each one of them could have resulted in the death of the people involved if circumstances had been different. It has been both neat and horrifying to see tracks exposed for either being totally unprepared or even worse, pretending to be prepared and they actually aren’t.

Last winter, we went to Lakeland Dragway in Florida. The place is an outlaw track with a giant sign at the gate that reads, “NO INSURANCE – RACE AT YOUR OWN RISK” . There was no sign of a safety crew, no sign of an ambulance, and no one pretenting that there was a safety crew there. While we certainly don’t think it is the brightest idea to race your junk at a place with no active safety crew, we at least respect the facility for letting people know what they’re getting in to when pulling through the gate. There wasn’t a single person that came in to race that missed the sign.

The flipside of that scenario are the tracks that pose to be fully equipped and operational in the safety department when in fact they are not. Back in early September, video surfaced on YellowBullet showing the “track ambulance” at No Limit Raceway in Morocco, Indiana (Formerly US41 Raceway). Watch the video below and prepare to be shocked.