MARYLAND INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY, THE HOME OF JIMMY TAYLOR’ S DOORSLAMMER RECORDS SET LAST FALL, WILL SEE A NEW LEVEL OF SPEED WHEN THE NHRA MISSION FOODS SERIES ROLLS IN FOR THE FIRST TIME. |
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Just getting three quarters of the way into some of our goals would be extremely successful. But this one was like the epitome of all my goals.
I think we host one of, if not the, most successful and popular smalltire radial series in the country with the Radial Outlaws and No Mercy and Lights Out. We have a huge race in the no-time world with Michael Hill’ s Year End Finale. So I wanted two big races, which is a noprep race, which I’ m still working on, and an NHRA national event. With the NHRA national event being the biggest race in the country, that was my ultimate goal. To think we’ re shy of three years of ownership and achieving that goal within those three years, I would’ ve never believed that were the case back in March of 2023 when we were in conversations with Ozzy and Maria about buying the property and the business.
Royce Miller: Well, we had talked to NHRA for probably the last four or five years. We’ ve had informal discussions about it. I was just looking for the window of opportunity, and they called me when they were ready.
Jason Peterson: We have been courted by NHRA for years, and for whatever reason, it wasn’ t the right move for us at that time. Now, the time became right.
One of our requests was that if we did switch [ to NHRA ], we wanted an NHRA national event. When they first started courting us, we were hosting IHRA national events
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already. Then when IHRA stopped doing their national event stuff, we actually kept the Northern Nationals going ourselves, with our own produced event since then. It’ s been many years now that we’ ve been doing our own event in August to substitute that national event. But that was one of our criteria: we wanted a national event.
Dan VanHorn: Well, I’ d say it was really right away. Once we started discussing what our goals were for the track, renovating was priority one. And I don’ t initially know if a national event was on our radar. We wanted nitro. We wanted to have some type of a showcase or a match race. The reason why a national event wasn’ t necessarily on our radar is because of Charlotte [ zMAX Dragway ] being right down the road. And we just never thought it would be an opportunity that we’ d have.
But of course, a national event started becoming the topic of conversation as we grew and as the facility got nicer and as we started proving the capabilities that we had as owners and the renovation phases. The support we had from the city of Rockingham and the state of North Carolina and the county tourism, they were all about going big and we wanted to go big. Once we got some financial support to complete some projects that had to happen for us to even be remotely considered, we started really kind of pushing hard.
We had actually reached out to
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“ We have been courted by NHRA for years, and for whatever reason, it wasn’ t the right move for us at that time. Now, the time became right.”
— Jason Peterson
the NHRA, I can’ t remember the timeframe, but Josh Peterson had written us a letter basically saying,“ This is what would have to happen to the facility to be considered for a national event.” So we used that letter from the NHRA to submit for grant requests from the various local government bodies, and we were able to secure some really substantial numbers to renovate the concrete grandstands, which was a $ 1.7 million project. That was something that us as owners would never have been able to do. I really have to thank Megann Lambeth with the Richmond County Tourism Development Authority, City of Rockingham Manager Monty Crump, State Rep. Ben Moss, State Senator Dave Craven, Economic
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Development Partnership of North Carolina Chairman Gene McLaurin, Pat Molamphy with NC DOT, and the Cole Foundation. They’ ve all been instrumental in the process.
So once that happened, we’ re like,“ Hey, listen, we might be able to pull this off.” And then as things started developing during the offseason this last year with VMP [ Virginia Motorsports Park ] bowing out and with that predetermined date on the schedule, we started really pushing pretty hard for it.
What are the opportunities that come with hosting one? What are the challenges? RT: The challenges are the infrastructure of the property. It’ s 22 years old. Their goal may or may not have been a national event when it was built. There are things that I would do differently as far as the ingress and egress of the property. The tower and the lack of buildings are our other biggest challenges. It’ s a bare-bones facility right now, so we’ ve had to make numerous improvements in order to host a national event.
The opportunities are endless. Once you get a national event, that opens the doors to these national accounts and bigger companies because we would get a lot of exposure, and in turn, they would get a lot of exposure. Just being on national television for four hours in May, that in itself is a huge value to the property and the name. That is a
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