Maple Grove- IHRA (3 Viewers)

[Jack]

Maybe you didn't follow the announcements at PRI over the weekend but NHRA just announced their alignment with US131 on Thursday or Friday. Saturday IHRA announced buying MG. Today NHRA announced moving MG to US131, their newly sanctioned track. Not really a surprise at all. Good timing or coincidence? I don't know.

I'm pretty sure the NHRA had advanced notice / warning of the Map!e Grove sale and had time to get the 131 deal together.

 

[camaro]

So the owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway Shouldn't allow The BrickYard 500 or F1?

 

[hobbes105]

From a fan’s perspective, I’m extremely frustrated by this. It feels like NHRA has given a big F.U. to fans in the New York and Philly area and made it clear they don’t really care. First we lost Englishtown, with seemingly no effort to replace it with a nearby track—or even add a second race at Maple Grove at the time—and now Maple Grove itself appears to be done as far as NHRA is concerned. There’s no track left in the NY metro area, and NHRA doesn’t seem concerned in the slightest.

We’ve attended all three days at Maple Grove since the 1990s. Walking the pits, meeting our favorite drivers, and being part of that atmosphere was something we genuinely looked forward to every year. Now that’s gone, and there’s nothing nearby to replace it. Norwalk, Epping, and Maryland are simply too far for a day trips.

IHRA has its own problems, but given NHRA’s long history of ignoring both racers and fans, this shift could eventually be a positive. That said, IHRA is going to have a hard time filling the stands. Maple Grove was always packed for NHRA national events, and IHRA just doesn’t have the big-name drivers that pull in casual fans. Maybe that changes down the road, but right now I’m honestly not interested in going to a 1/8-mile IHRA race without the teams and drivers I’ve followed for years.

 

[DragFan2]

I would imagine this was not sprung on NHRA and steps to change location start some time ago.

Well, based on what Larry Morgan stated in a recent video, it was a pretty recent decision by the Koretskys to sell Maple Grove to the IHRA group. I suspect NHRA feels they had/have enough time to put on the national event at US 131. That announcement by them to sanction that track was probably well along in their planning. Nobody really knows what went down and when other than the Koretsky's.

 

[Mike]

True, but they got both tracks to flip by virtue of promising a national event, thus causing IHRA to lose what many regarded to be the better IHRA tracks around.

The got the IHRA event Because BillyMeyer owned IHRA and the track.

 

[T.Smith]

Some of these responses are comical. Your girlfriend dumped you for another man, but she calls you for one last hoo-rah even though she's with someone else. You say no and somehow you're the unreasonable one.