SGMP IS KNOWN TO DIEHARD DRAG RACING FANS AROUND THE WORLD AS“ THE HOME OF THE FLYING CARS” THANKS TO DONALD LONG’ S LIGHTS OUT AND NO MERCY, BUT IT WILL TAKE ON A NEW LEVEL OF NOTORIETY AS AN NHRA NATIONAL EVENT TRACK. |
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dollar amount on it.
It’ s extremely gratifying to hear the conversations or hear our fans calling me on a daily basis asking for tickets and their excitement about their race coming. Just the joy that we’ re able to bring to these families that have never been able to go to either Gainesville or Atlanta when it held the Southern Nationals, that in itself is the biggest benefit I take from all this – bringing so much joy to our local fan base and racers here at South Georgia.
RM: The NHRA national event is the pinnacle of our sport. If you’ d have seen the track when I took over in 1990, it looked like a deserted airport. So to be able to have navigated over the 38 years that I’ ve been here to get to this point, personally, it’ s very satisfying. I’ m looking forward to standing between the first pair of Top Fuel cars going down the track, knowing that we took it from where it was to this level. I’ m proud of that point, to have brought that to this area, with the exposure, it’ s wonderful.
I do believe this will bring in more notoriety for the track and this area, between the people that attend the event and people that will see us on television, and think“ I wondered what that place looked
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like,” because we have a very limited road frontage here. When you drive by, if you don’ t pull in, you don’ t know how big we really are.
We’ re the first Fox network televised event of the year. So you want to make sure you’ re ready for it and dot your Is and cross your Ts the best you can.
JP: We are now on the elite side. We are an NHRA national event track. We’ ve always known or always felt within that we were able to host one of these types of events, and now we’ re going to go out and prove it. Our fans are already supporting it. Our ticket sales, according to NHRA, are really good. Especially in mid-September, our air quality and temperatures should be really good to produce some good elapsed times and speeds. We’ re very excited to see that and to prove to those racers that we have a facility that they can race on.
DVH: It’ s a full-circle thing. This is one of the selling points I pushed to the NHRA. They wrote us a letter saying what we’ d need to do in order to possibly host a national event. We used that letter, for lack of a better term, as justification or leverage to receive funding and support. We did our part and the senators, the state reps, the city manager, and the
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“ The NHRA national event is the pinnacle of our sport. I’ m looking forward to standing between the first pair of Top Fuel cars going down the track, knowing that we took it from where it was to this level.”
— Royce Miller
tourism director all did their part. So now the NHRA’ s got to step up a little bit and say,“ All right, well, heck, they did everything we asked them to do. We’ ve got to bring what we said we were going to bring.” If
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other facilities or other states and counties want to follow a similar path, you’ ve got to show them a full circle or a successful path. That’ s what this is going to do. I see this turning into somewhat of a template and a structure that the NHRA can use to attract funding for tourism into different regions. We just happen to be the first one to use this as a path.
Last year was an unbelievable year – probably the best year the track’ s ever had outside of when they used to have the Winston Invitational. Just a really good year, a ton of growth. We’ re excited to get it right back to where it was and even bigger with the national event. The national event is the pinnacle of our sport, as everybody knows. It’ s a little humbling, but it’ s also intimidating. We’ re super excited to showcase Rockingham. It still has the old-school feel. It’ s still Rockingham. All the renovations and all the things that we’ ve changed and upgraded, it hasn’ t changed what this place is. This place has a ton of history. It’ s been around since 1969. The who’ s who in our sport have raced here, and there’ s a ton of excitement with those racers and teams coming back for a points race for the first time. DI
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