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The Franklins, who were a part of the founding owners group when the series began in 2014, have been the sole owners for the last several years, guiding the PDRA through growth and evolution. The family purchased Virginia Motorsports Park in late 2017 and similarly not only kept that facility open and operating as a dragstrip, but revitalized it and elevated its status. As if that wasn’ t enough, the family also fields cars in multiple classes, with Tommy racing in the co-headlining Pro Nitrous division alongside his daughter, Amber Denton, Amber’ s husband, Blake Denton, competing in Pro Street, and Amber’ s younger sister, Ashley Franklin, racing in Top Dragster.
The offseason did see VMP change hands, though, as the Franklins sold the track to Darryl Cuttell and IHRA Motorsports. The move frees up the
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Franklins and key team members like PDRA Series Director Tyler Crossnoe, who previously served as vice president of VMP, to focus entirely on series initiatives. VMP is still scheduled to host two Red Line Oil PDRA Series national events as well as all three PDRA Triple Threat Bracket Series events.
In the weeks leading up to the season-opening PDRA Carolina Nationals presented by Pee Dee Fleet, March 25-28, at Darlington Dragway, Drag Illustrated spoke with Tommy Franklin to find out what comes next for the PDRA.
Why was it important to you and Judy and your family to keep the PDRA going?
PDRA is special. I think that one of the things I realized was what we have – the level of racing in the
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regions that we race and the schedule, just the whole layout – it’ s special. We have a lot of racers that have supported us over the years, and I just honestly felt like I couldn’ t walk away from that. It was nothing against any of the other organizations. There’ s room for all of us out here and everybody will succeed. I never felt like PDRA would look like it looks or look like it did if we were to move on. Got deep into my feelings and just said, hey, as long as people are showing up at the gate to support us, then I’ m going to support them as much as I can.
What is it about the PDRA and what you’ ve built that you’ re most proud of?
I’ ve tried to put my finger on it because it’ s hard to try to understand what is so special. It’ s a nationalevent-caliber race. It has all of the
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workings of that. The competition is crazy good. The car quality is crazy good. It’ s a national-event-style event, ran with organization, ran with safety, ran with performances that are unheard of, but then it’ s just like you’ re hanging out at your local dragstrip on Friday night. Everybody is such a tight-knit group. I think that’ s what changes it. It doesn’ t have the corporate feel, and I hope it never gets the corporate feel.
Series Director Tyler Crossnoe previously also served as the VP at VMP. He’ s now full-time focused on PDRA. How important was it to keep Tyler on board as the series director?
I’ m excited to see what we can do with giving it 100 % of our efforts. And I hate to say that because I don’ t want to sound like we weren’ t giving 100 % effort, but it’ s hard to put all the effort all the time. When you had
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