[6130]

It has been a life goal of ours to move to Texas, for many years. I recently retired, and so we bought a place with some acreage in central Texas. We've been here since Thanksgiving, and we absolutely love living here.

I have been racing since the '70s, but I have only raced in NHRA Division 6.

I assumed that all drag strips across the nation were going to be pretty much like Seattle, or at least like Woodburn.

Little River is the nearest drag strip to me, so I headed out there to take a look, at a recent Summit Super Series bracket racing event, and was really surprised at how different it was, as compared to what I have experienced before.

The strip is VERY narrow, so narrow that it's physically impossible to drive around the water and back in, so everybody's front tires are going through the water on their way to the starting line. It's only 1/8 mile, the timing equipment looks old, and the guardrails have obviously been hit and not repaired. There are trees just beyond the right guardrail, and spectators just beyond the left guardrail. They don't sell alcohol there, but I saw a LOT of drinking going on, including people working on race cars and people operating golf carts and other support vehicles. Hopefully none of the racers were drunk. The pits were dirt, and the return road runs right through the middle of the pits, which is pretty exciting after dark with unlit race cars whizzing through the pits at 30 mph on their way to the lanes, sometimes with unlit cars, golf carts, quads, and/or dirt bikes going the other way, and a lot of pedestrians going every which way. The bleachers are falling apart, and the fences look like they're falling down. There were numerous children buzzing around on dirt bikes and quads, with no helmets and no direct parental supervision. I saw numerous cars that should not have passed tech, and at least one racer that made multiple laps with his helmet unfastened. I lost count of the number of times they had to stop to fiddle with the top end lights, pick up parts off the track, and clean fluids off the track. One hoopty V8 S10 pickup crashed half way between the water and the starting line. A sand rail on mud tires took about 400 feet to reach the 330, and then lost the battle, doing several spins and coming to rest facing the starting line.

I suppose that if all the cars there were really slow, then some of this stuff might not matter so much, but there were some cars running in the 4s at around 140 mph.

This was all very different from what I have experienced before. I'd like to take my wife to the strip to try her car out just for fun, but what I saw didn't look nearly as safe as what I have experienced before.

Is this just "normal" when drag racing in this part of the country, or did I just come across an unusual drag strip?