ATLANTA DRAGWAY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A Pawn IN A DRAG RACING POLITICAL CHESS MATCH

The discussion could only take place after the trail disappeared. With Atlanta Dragway choosing a battery manufacturing plant, the real story is coming out.

Atlanta Dragway was a political pawn, and once its use ended, it disappeared.

The first dirt moved to Atlanta Dragway was in 1968, and it was the third owner, Gene Bennett, who finally made it stick. The fact that it was declared Atlanta’s drag strip was a misnomer given that it was approximately 68 miles from the metropolitan city.

Atlanta Dragway’s biggest selling point was that it was a facility coveted by the late IHRA founder and president Larry Carrier.

“Larry Carrier really wanted a drag strip in Atlanta,” said drag racing historian Bret Kepner.

Carrier had just introduced RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. and its Winston brand and needed a new facility to entertain the RJ Reynolds brass.

Essentially, Atlanta Dragway was a newer track built to the same specifications as Rockingham and Darlington, with a large tower and grandstands so close to the action that a racing fan could almost reach out and touch the cars. The drag strip hosted its first IHRA National event in the spring of 1976.

When Norman “Moose” Pearah took over Atlanta Dragway in July 1980, the facility moved from IHRA to NHRA and hosted the first NHRA Southern Nationals in April 1981, on the date previously reserved for the IHRA Dixie Nationals .

For all its splendor and beauty in its early days, Atlanta Dragway, according to those working in the industry at the time, was not a major profit center.

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“No one was making a lot of money running Atlanta Dragway, but the location was something the NHRA really needed to impress Winston’s upper management who, at that point, were involved in both (sanctioning bodies ),” Kepner said. “So at that point, the IHRA brought their leaders from Winston to Rockingham, and the NHRA brought theirs to Atlanta, and the RJR leaders thought nothing of it. They just knew about the drag strip, that they sponsored drag races and they went to Atlanta once a year. They didn’t care about the letter that was on the portal.

Then came Texas Motorplex and Billy Meyer created a specialty race for RJR, and they soon moved their program to one of the Seven Wonders of the Drag Racing World. However, when Meyer made the ill-fated purchase of the IHRA in 1988, the Winston All-Stars event was moved to Atlanta Dragway, accompanied by Steve Earwood, who revamped the facility and renamed it The New Atlanta Dragway. – Moose sold it to Gary Brown, Jerry Brown, Rudy Bowen and John JD Steven.

Earwood didn’t stay in Atlanta long before becoming part of an ownership group that purchased Rockingham Dragway and hosted the Winston All-Stars event.

Gary Brown purchased Atlanta Dragway and later sold it to the NHRA in 1993. Whether it was purchased to prevent Home Depot’s purchase of the real estate remains to be seen. The track found itself in the right place at the right time in 2002 when Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, Georgia, took over sponsorship of the series when RJ Reynolds was forced out of motorsport.

“The place was always packed for national events, and a lot of that was due to the abundance of promotional tickets handed out in advance,” Kepner explained. “Yes, there were paid tickets, but these were in the minority.”

After the pandemic-ridden season, when Coca-Cola left the NHRA, Atlanta Dragway became unusable, along with two other national event facilities (Bristol and Charlotte) drawing from the same demographic.

The 318-acre Atlanta Dragway has been sold to Terra Commerce LLC.

And after 46 years of serving the drag racing world, the once-coveted drag strip is part of a real estate deal for a community that was once just an exit off Interstate 85.