With two more tracks dropping from the schedule after this year (bringing the total to at least five since 2018), the Camping World Drag Racing Series is entertaining replacements.
John Bandimere Jr. confirmed that his family’s Morrison, Colo., drag strip is for sale, and the Phoenix facility in March hosted its final race. So the Camping World Drag Racing Series is scouting new venues, and it has been kicking around ideas to try new enticements (like NASCAR has done with its Clash at the Coliseum and its Chicago street race).
And Clay Millican, the final Top Fuel winner at Bandimere Speedway, had a suggestion: have a couple of races at eighth-mile tracks.
The NHRA in 2008 shortened the quarter-mile course to 1,000 feet following Scott Kalitta’s fatal high-speed crash. The idea has popped up before, and one of the arguments against it is that tuners would have a tough time switching up their traditional routines. But Millican’s opinion is that if these crew chiefs could take on the challenges of the thin air at Denver (conditions that produce data useless anywhere else), they certainly could adjust to an eighth-mile track.
“With the way land prices are going,” he said, “you can't be mad at some of these track owners for selling. You just can't. The numbers that are flying around, rumor-wise, that these tracks are selling for, you can't be mad at the people that are selling them,” he said. “And (I’m) a bracket racer at heart. I grew up eighth-mile racing. There's some eighth-mile facilities in this country that I don't know why we couldn't go to some of them. And there's three great racetracks in Canada.
“There are a couple out there that could hold a heck of an NHRA national event,” he said. “I think it’s something they should look at. I really do.”
Millican said he expects to “get grief” from those who disagree. “I get grief all the time on my YouTube channel: ‘I'm not watching anymore because it's a thousand feet.’ But with some of these tracks going away, why wouldn't we look at some of these wonderful eighth-mile facilities that are available out there?”
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.
