Marcus Smith, son of Bruton Smith and the President and GM of Lowe’s Motor Speedway and the guy who over sees zMax Dragway, has offered $20,000 to the winner of a special grudge race to take place on Friday night, September 18th, at the mega-strip, according to CompetitionPlus.com. Neither driver had committed to the match up at the time this was written.
The race would take place at the end of the first day of qualifying at the NHRA Carolina Nationals. This is a great publicity grab for the always creative Smiths, who at this point make up the most powerful race track ownership group in the country. They are all born promoters.
Click here to read the full story from CompetitionPlus
This of course stems from the major confrontation between John Force and Tony Pedregon during the 55th annual Mac Tools US Nationals. We covered that mess yesterday and you can read about it here.
This is hardly the first time that large dollars have been dangled to incite a match race. Back in 2002, then IHRA President Bill Bader decided that the dominating team of Clay Millican and Mike Kloeber could take on and beat the NHRA dominating team of Larry Dixon and Dick Lahaie in a 2-out-of-3 match race worth $100,000 to the winner. The race never materialized, but it did get some good press. Read about it in this Ian Tocher piece from Drag Racing Online back in 2002. There was also a big dollar match race that never materialized between Scotty Cannon and John Force back when Cannon first joined the nitro Funny Car ranks. Dollar figures were thrown around and rumors were that Jim Jannard of Oakley (the primary sponsor of Cannon’s car) was even bantering around a million bucks. The race never came off.
Thanks to Todd Ryden of MSD and Rob Martin at SouthWestDrags.com for the tip!
