Drag Illustrated Issue 150, November 2019 | Page 24
Dirt
Anarchy!
Anarchy No Prep takes over
Great Lakes Dragway
By Van Abernethy
A
ing and no spectators. It began to leak out to the
point where people were ready to storm the place
like Area 51, so KOTS decided to cash in on the
hoopla and begin allowing spectators to the party.
Then came the unceremonious split from the
Morocco, Indiana facility, when the race was
abruptly moved to Great Lakes Dragaway in 2012,
just days before the next scheduled running. The
move to Great Lakes thoroughly opened the flood
gates of fanfare and swarms of media. “It was
just dumb luck and timing that got the thing
going, but then it went straight to the top!” was
Eckhardt’s assessment.
For thrill-seeking fans who show up looking for
a rush, Anarchy delivers. “Yes, fans can actually
stand along the wall to the eighth-mile mark, and
it’s an experience you can’t get anywhere else,”
says Eckhardt. Race goers in this arena desire
an intimate street car environment, which allows
spectators to get very close to cars that sometimes
skate around on the ragged edge. Eckhardt will
attest to the fact that no situation is perfect and
without NHRA-spec walls – the kind they have at
Great Lakes Dragaway – fans standing along the
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retaining wall wouldn’t even be a conversation –
you simply couldn’t do it. “We also recently put
concrete barriers behind the starting line, which
provide us with a reasonable level of barricade in
case a car backing up loses control or accelerates,”
Eckhardt explains. “There’s something in place
to slow it down or stop it.”
Some observers are staunch opponents of mobs
gathering on the starting line and shake their
heads in disbelief as spectators line the wall, soak-
ing up every ounce of street-race intimacy that
Anarchy No Prep provides. “For the safety critics,
we’ve never once had an issue with anyone getting
injured or hit with anything while standing along
the wall,” Eckhardt says.
If this all sounds a little unorthodox, one might
also raise an eyebrow at what the Anarchy rule-
book has to say about crossing the centerline
during eliminations, and how one bizarre pass in
Morocco helped influence the decision. “There’s
an underlying rule that if you cross the centerline
in front of your opponent you’re out, but if you
cross the centerline behind your opponent you’re
still very much in the race,” Eckhardt explains.
Issue 150
ABERNETHY
lthough Anarchy No Prep was
officially born in September 2018,
the twice-yearly event at Wisconsin’s
Great Lakes Dragaway is actually a
continuation of a well-known series within the
no-prep community known as Chitown’s King of
the Street, or KOTS for short. The event was co-
founded by Steve Gillespie and Trent Eckhardt in
2008, and after a drama-filled split on the heels
of the September 2018 running, Gillespie stepped
away and Eckhardt continued the event with the
new Anarchy moniker, holding the traditional
pair of races at Great Lakes Dragaway in June
and September, respectively.
To truly appreciate the fanfare that this event
generates, one must look back to the beginning,
back when this whole deal went down in a large-
ly underground fashion at U.S. 41 Dragstrip in
Morocco, Indiana. “We were having some really
good racing there and it kinda catapulted us into
legend status locally, Eckhardt begins, “but in the
beginning, it was just one class with 25 cars, so
it wasn’t difficult to do, just a little party really.”
Few people outside of the participants even
knew about this cloak-and-dagger underworld of
racing, as it wasn’t being advertised or reported
upon by any media outlets, and that by design.
So, they continued holding these high-drama
races under hush-hush conditions, and the whole
thing would keep growing larger, so KOTS kept
doing their deal – all with no cameras, no report-