DragRacingOnline is reporting that Memphis Motorsports Park, the drag racing and circle track facility that hosted the NHRA’s Mid-South Nationals, GM Performance LSX Shootout, Hot Rod Pump Gas Drags, and numerous other high profile events, has closed up shop and will not reopen for the 2010 season.
This news comes after Dover Motorsports, which actually owns the track (and several others), tried to sell the facility to an outfit called Gulf Coast Entertainment. Gulf Coast could not get funding and Dover decided to close the facility.
NHRA has released a statement on the matter.
Now for our personal history with Memphis Motorsports Park. I was the announcer for the 2007 and 2008 Hot Rod Pump Gas drags, held at the facility. During the 2007 race, things were a bit of a circus in the tower as the drag strip had no dedicated manager after the previous manager literally snuck off in the middle of the night to another track.
Over the course of the weekend I was able to help fix some potentially high profile errors in the tower before they caused a major issue for the operation of the race. I have had a decade or so of experience in drag strip towers so I was familiar with aspects of the timing system that they were not, and basically at the end of qualifying, the timing system was telling us that there was no qualifying. It was looking like a major disaster. After a couple of tense moments, we jumped out of the frying pan and the weekend continued on without a hitch.
I was approached by the GM of the facility at that time and late after we finished the race on Saturday night, interviewed in the tower for the drag strip manager’s job. It went so well that by the time I got home, there were real estate catalogs waiting on my front steps with selected towns highlighted.
For a couple of different reasons, we could never close the deal. Looking at the situation now, I guess that wasn’t a bad thing.
