Will NHRA Drag Racing Ever Return to Arizona?

The Wild Horse Pass drag strip saw NHRA action just this past March, hosting the Arizona Nationals.

The NHRA Arizona Nationals are finished. The last event ran March 24-26 of this year. However...

A recent announcement by Radford Racing School, which operates a racing facility adjacent to the drag strip, said that it would be “collaborating” with Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park on the Gila River Indian Reservation to keep the park’s four permanent tracks open, including the drag strip.

Still, it doesn’t mean an NHRA national event will necessarily return to Arizona.

Radford is the racing school formerly known as Bondurant. That school traces its roots all the way back to founder Carroll Shelby in 1968, though the school moved around a bit before settling at its current location just south of Chandler, Arizona.

Current management purchased it two years ago and renamed it Radford Racing School. The school is on property right next to the Wild Horse Pass drag strip, which had hosted NHRA national events since 1985.

There are numerous different racetracks in the single patch of land adjacent to Interstate 10 as it runs south from Phoenix toward Tucson.

The Wild Horse Pass tracks include: a 14-turn, 1.6-mile Main Track road course; 10-turn, 1.25-mile East Track road course; 12-turn, 1.1-mile West Track road course with 3/8-mile straightaway; and a quarter-mile-mile NHRA-sanctioned drag strip. There’s even a lake for drag boat races.

But wait, there’s more.

That list doesn’t include Radford Racing School’s tracks. Those include: the recently upgraded 15-turn, 1.6-mile main track, designed by previous owner Bob Bondurant himself in 1990; a half-mile kart track; and a 10-acre black top section called a skills pad.

Off-track, Radford boasts: a newly renovated guest center, track-side student lounge, gift shop, and event center.

It's a motorsportsa-pa-looza.

But it’s also right next to a dangerous stretch of Interstate 10. That stretch has been the site of many deadly wrecks, including a fiery crash that claimed five lives in January of this year.

As a result, plans were made to widen the highway and modify an overpass right next to where the drag strip is. How those plans will jibe with the recent Radford announcement is still unclear.

“As you can imagine, we’re excited about this collaboration with the Gila River Indian Reservation to make the four tracks, which includes the drag strip, available to Radford students,” a Radford rep said. “However, we can’t speak to any future NHRA races or highway expansion efforts.”

Closing race tracks is a trend, for sure. The half-mile dirt oval of Manzanita Speedway closed down in 2009. Two years ago the state lost the 1/3-mile dirt oval of Arizona Speedway when the land became too valuable. Just last month Bandimere Speedway in Colorado announced it was closing.

Nonetheless, the Radford team is confident. Or sounds confident in a press release.

“We are here to stay—in a big way,” said Pat Velasco, owner of Radford Racing School. “Since adding new courses, including a drag racing class with a nine-second NHRA license option, we’ve had tremendous interest from enthusiasts, pro racers, and partners alike.”

A little farther down I-10 is Tucson Dragway, an NHRA-sanctioned quarter-mile race track that has hosted a number of events. Would that work? At the moment it doesn’t have the grandstands or corporate suites you’d find at a typical NHRA Nationals event.

But there’s no saying they couldn’t be built, is there?