KYLE SEIPEL
WHILE SEIPEL’S RACING CAREER HAS SPANNED
DECADES AND A SLEW OF NHRA DIVISION
7 CHAMPIONSHIPS, HIS MOST RECENT
ACCOMPLISHMENTS HAVE COME FROM HIS
PARTNERSHIP WITH THE LAMB FAMILY. BETWEEN
DRIVING THE HENDERSON, NEVADA, FAMILY’S ENTRIES
IN SUPER COMP AND TOP DRAGSTER TO ADVISING
FIVE-TIME WORLD CHAMPION JUSTIN LAMB IN STOCK
AND SUPER STOCK, SEIPEL HAS ENJOYED A GREAT
DEAL OF SUCCESS OVER THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS.
and having the demand that we have, we never
would’ve guessed that, not at all.
You clearly share a tight bond with Peter, from a longtime
friendship to what seems to be a very smooth business
partnership. How has that friendship developed over
the years as you’ve worked together on these races?
We make a great team. The things I’m not very
good at, he’s great at. Some things let’s say he’s
not the best at, I’m really good at. I think the
craziest thing is how quickly he adapted to the
race promoter role. I grew up at the drag strip
watching my mom run Fremont and Sonoma.
I’ve been in the tower my whole life and worked
about every job at the track: I’ve been the starter,
worked the staging lanes, I’ve done time slips, I’ve
done tech, and I’ve been in the tower all my life.
Peter and I started this business and I thought,
“OK, I’m going to be the guy who runs the events
since that’s what I’ve been around having watched
my mom run these tracks since 1983.”
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This guy, Biondo, he puts his mind to some-
thing, it doesn’t matter if it’s a world champi-
onship or his marriage or his business, Biondo
Racing Products, he can basically accomplish
anything. I thought I was going to be the guy
running these events. Well, he’s in the tower and
he’s managing these events in a way I never en-
visioned. That being said, I don’t think there’s
anybody better at running these races. He had
no prior experience with running events. Here I’d
been around it my whole life, but this guy comes
in and totally has the knowledge and the wit to
run these races better than I’ve seen anybody do.
That’s one perspective.
I think the biggest thing we have is we have
very little ego. We put our egos aside and we try
to improve ourselves, improve our partnership
and improve our friendship. I think over the years
we’ve done a very good job of doing that.
The Fall Fling $500K, Sept. 17-21, 2019 at Bristol Dragway,
made a big splash in the bracket racing scene when it
was revealed. What was the idea behind that event?
Peter and I had been working on this 10th an-
niversary race model for about 18 months lead-
ing up to it. We decided we wanted to make it
$500,000-to-win guaranteed. The early stages
of this business model, about 18 months ago, we
were asking racers to pre-enter at a high entry fee,
which is unheard of. Obviously at this point we’ve
tried pre-entry races in the $690 price range and
we’ve had very good success, but we’re asking
somebody to pay $1,850 for one day of racing
and having to, regardless of if they paid that in
one lump sum or if they made payments, we’re
asking them to pay that upfront.
We truly thought in the early stages of this
that if we’d sell out in two or three weeks we’d be
ecstatic. Asking somebody to pay a substantial
amount of money upfront was uncharted terri-
tory. That being said, we promoted it the way we
normally do and the closer we got to the pre-entry
date, we started thinking this thing is building up
some good steam. We might sell this thing out in
a couple days instead of a couple weeks.
But it ended up selling out in a couple minutes, right?
Yes, a few minutes. It was March 5th and Emily
and Peter flew in and we were all together here
at my Pleasanton office. I utilize Google Analytics
where you can see live how many people are on
the site. About five minutes before we went live,
we knew there was already 300 people on the
site. Your mind starts wandering and our first
concern was if our billing system would be able
to handle the traffic. We bill in real time, just like
if you entered an NHRA national event.
We were also in uncharted territory with the
payment program. We spent a good 6-8 weeks
leading up to it where we had everything fine-
tuned to where somebody could enter their credit
card info and it would be billed on that March
5th date, then there were three different pro-
grams: You’d be billed in full upfront, you could
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