D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
W
hen it comes to allur-
ing names for a drag strip,
“Emerald Coast Dragway”
is pretty hard to beat! Tucked neatly
along Florida’s Panhandle in the
northwest town of Holt, I always
wondered what the place looked
like as I often conjured up images
of ocean waves crashing beside the
track with the smell of suntan oil
in the air and palm trees swaying
in the breeze while everyone me-
andered around drinking from a
coconut.
Well, I finally had the opportunity
to visit this nifty NHRA-sanctioned
eighth-miler last month, and al-
though it didn’t exactly fit the far-
fetched images I had worked up
in my head, the track does
have some other appealing
features that make it unique.
It’s conveniently located
off Interstate 10, right beside
Elgin Air Force Base Bomb-
ing Range, which blows stuff
up all day...and that in itself
is kinda cool! Drag strip
manager Ryan Milliken
says that noisy neighbors can
come in handy since it sort
of discourages people from
moving into the area and
then complaining about race
engines disturbing them on
weekends.
The town of Holt is a
small locale with about
2,500 residents and is positioned in
the western tip of Okaloosa County.
The Gulf of Mexico – while not ex-
actly adjacent to the track as it was
in my dreams – is a relatively short
45-minute drive from the drag strip,
while Holt’s rural location attracts
visitors seeking outdoor adventures
such as canoeing, fishing and hiking
on the abundant local trails.
The drag strip came into the pic-
ture in 1998 when it was opened by
a local racer, Chip Kooser, who ran
the track for seven years before it
traded hands of ownership several
times. The track fell into some un-
fortunate legal difficulties in 2011,
the details of which Milliken isn’t
even completely sure about since it
predates his involvement with the
track.
The one thing he does remember
vividly, though, is how bummed he
was when he heard the
news that the track was
shutting down. “The
news broke on a Mon-
day in 2011 that Emer-
ald Coast Dragway had
ceased all operations,
and its closure was swift
and completely unex-
pected,” recalls Milliken.
It was particularly disturbing
news for Milliken since he had just
recently begun drag racing and
was enjoying his local track im-
mensely. “When I heard the news,
I wandered around lost for the rest
of the day – it was like my girlfriend
just broke up with me!” he insists.
So, the track lay dormant for about Emerald Coast Dragway.
“When I found out Ozzy
was interested, I figured
I’d back off and just let
him buy it, then I’d have
my local drag strip again,”
he says.
There were tons of
red tape when it came to
sorting out the legalities of why the
track closed and what it would take
to get it reopened, but Moya per-
severed and successfully reopened
the track in 2016. Much work was
done to get it operational, such as
resurfacing the track, installing new
concrete walls, a timing system,
scoreboards and bright stadium
lights. As expected, every building
three years while many racers in the
Florida Panhandle resorted to trav-
eling hours to visit various tracks
in Alabama.
In 2015, Milliken was actually
making moves to buy the dormant
drag strip, mainly to relocate the
headquarters of his business, Hard-
way Performance, which specializes
in diesel applications. “The drag
strip property was in my price
range and it would have been fine
if I called up the bank and told them
I wanted to buy 27 acres next to the
interstate to put my business, but
the second they found out the prop-
erty was a racetrack they instantly
stopped returning my calls!”
Right about that same time, Mil-
liken learned that Ozzy Moya, owner
of Orlando Speed World and South
Georgia Motorsports Park, was also
interested in buying and reopening on the property had been thorough-
ly looted of its copper and anything
else of value during its three-year
dormancy, so its grand reopening
was quite the undertaking.
One year after reopening Emer-
ald Coast, Moya approached Mil-
liken about selling him the track,
which is how Milliken eventually be-
came involved in its operation. “We
reached an agreement where Ozzy
still owns the land and I bought the
racing entity, the equipment on the
land, etc.,” says Milliken.
His plan was to come in and man-
age the track for a short time and
then turn it over to a key person who
would run the place, but after a year
and a half at the helm, Milliken is
still “working 80 hours a week, nine
days a week,” he laughingly tells
people. “I want to go back to being
a guy in the pits who’s just here to
race!” he laughs.
He’s found some very capable
people, but they all have day jobs.
“The track is not able to pay a full-
time person – we don’t have big
sponsorships or anything like that,”
Milliken says. “If it doesn’t come
through the gate on weekends, we
don’t have it on Monday. That’s what
we’re working with.”
The track does have a huge leg
up with its favorable warm climate,
which allows for year-round opera-
tion. “We don’t really have an off-
season, but we do close down for
Thanksgiving, Christmas and New
Year’s,” says Milliken.
Fans and racers enjoy a wide
assortment of entertainment here
at Emerald Coast, which
kicked off the first week of
January with a huge bracket
and index bash with 133 cars
on the property. The follow-
ing race dates in January
saw kart racing, an NHRA
bracket points meet and
a visit from the Southern
Outlaw Gassers. Not a bad
line-up of racing when you
consider that much of the
country was digging their
way out of record snowfall
around this time. Emerald
Coast also hosts the Out of
Time No Prep series, the
South Coast Heads-Up no-
time series, Diesel Thunder
and three race dates featuring Pro
Mods in 2019.
For Milliken, the ultimate goal
remains relocating his thriving
Hardway Performance shop to the
grounds of the drag strip. His ex-
isting facility is for sale with hopes
of moving the business to the track
someday. “How cool would it be to
have a showroom with a speed shop,
an 8-10-bay shop where a customer
from out of town could bring in a
hot rod, have a place to work on
it with RV hook-ups and then test
it right here on site? It would be a
one-stop shop in every aspect,” says
Milliken.
It’s a move that would certainly
change the dynamic of Hardway
Performance, not to mention add-
ing one more reason to visit this
cool little drag strip located in the
Sunshine State.
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54 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
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Issue 142