Re: what 1/4 Mile Tracks have you been to?
If I may make a suggestion, please open your search up to include other facilities rather than just 1/4 mile Tracks:
- Like the Bondurant High Performance Driving facility in AZ
which has a road track, repair garage facility, experimental brake pad/skid pad and a cone area for other types of racing. OR
- Danny McKeevers Fast Lane Willow Springs Racing School OR maybe
- The Skip Barber Racing schools (if they visit tracks like Laguna Seca etc)
- Even the Great Bend Facility offered a lot of possibilities to
-have a catered bbq on-site meals
-have autocrossing and/or multiple events simultaneously and
-have fun type attractions (show-shine, stereo, dyno, etc)
on the premise with/without a live band (ignoring for a moment
the ability to also have a mtn bicycle , go cart, or scooter entry class).
I'm pretty sure the PPIR facility is used to do Colorado Outlaw Racing as well.
We have looked into other options. You can do auto-x at a 1/4 mile track assuming the track doesn't have a problem with it and the parking lot is big enough. Its nearly impossible to do drag racing at some other facility for obvious reasons, room. Although Auto-x/road racing has been increasingly popular with this group, not everyone is looking to do it competitively and many trucks are simply not setup to do it. As previously mentioned, we can hit two birds with one stone at a drag strip, or handcuff all the drag racers at one of these other events.
We also looked into renting a small airfield, either currently operating or abandoned, however that opens a whole new can of worms, namely insurance, no track prep, unknown surfaces, dedicated timing equipment, I could go on and on but hopefully you get the picture.
Point is, we were simply asking for peoples options on tracks they have been to. We have already mapped out possible locations and looked at multiple different options. On paper everything looks good, now we are looking for real life opinions that may serve as a tie breaker or make someplace a clear cut winner.
If you are planning to have Nationals in 2016 my advice is to not look at a track by its rating (i.e. 1-10) but its price and availability. That is what it comes down to isn't it?
Those always get looked at. We have already knocked out a few tracks because of price. Availability may become a factor based on what dates work out.
If a track is a 10 regardless if it is not available for the dates (which by the way in planning an event is the first step - set a date(s). ) it is pointless to worry about some arbitrary rating.
Nobody is worrying. We are simply looking for opinions. Perhaps a track that we have on the list that looks good on paper is really a hole in the ground in real life (dirt pit area, crappy food, nothing around it for 50 miles), that way we could take it out of the running.
This thread should be is your track available and how much to rent/ have a couple lanes for the event.
that would be a total disaster, there is no reason to send people on a wild goose chase especially when their local track might not even be in the running.
We are not currently ready to post a list of possibilities and we might never end up doing that because nobody is ever happy with anything anyway, all that will do is stir up more unnecessary discussion. The committee is just trying to obtain as much anonymous, unbiased opinions about tracks in this thread, that is all.
There are at least a dozen other factors we are trying to take into account on top of the general area(s) based on the owners location / distance willing to travel thread.