KYLE SEIPEL
the winner’s circle photos on Facebook. I don’t
care if you win a Wednesday night grudge race or
the Spring Fling Million, I think you deserve the
accolades and you deserve a lot of credit.
My mom, she’s from the old school, where she
didn’t really do a whole lot of that. She’s very
good at managing a race. Sonoma has a 7 o’clock
curfew and she’s very, very efficient at getting a
race done in a timely manner. But I thought I
could do some things to give it a newer look. We
raised the purses on the bracket race level, got
the big checks for winner’s circle photos and just
tried to spice it up a little bit.
How did taking that position affect your efforts promoting
the Fling races?
Steve Page and the whole crew at Sonoma, we
had some meetings after my mom decided she
wanted to retire. First and foremost, I wanted
to make sure it wouldn’t deter from our Spring
Fling events. They assured me that wouldn’t be
a problem – any time off I needed during those
races would be fine.
Essentially, I have to be there once a month
for staff meetings and I have to be there when-
ever there’s any type of drag strip events. There’s
Wednesday Night Grudge Drags about 75-80
percent of the Wednesdays from March through
November. I have to be there every single Wednes-
day. We have about 12 bracket races throughout
the year that I’m there for to manage and run. We
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have the national event in July. Then this year we
have the double divisional.
As far as day-to-day operations, I focus on the
Flings primarily, then I try to promote Sono-
ma the best I can as far as bracket races and the
national and divisional. I have a great team at
Sonoma to where a majority of the employees
have been there 20 or 30 years. I don’t have to
prep the track and I don’t have to do a whole lot
with the track. A guy like Jeff Foster (director of
drag racing operations at The Strip at Las Vegas
Motor Speedway) wears a lot of hats. From track
prep to checking the rollout to painting lanes to
laying concrete, he’s right in the middle of it. I’m
very fortunate that I’m just essentially at Sono-
ma to manage the races and promote the races,
similar to what I do with the Fling. I’m not (at
Sonoma) on a day-to-day basis.
You obviously have a ton of experience at the drag strip,
from growing up there to racing yourself and putting on
the Fling races. How have you taken all of that experience
and applied it to the operations at Sonoma?
Just like the Flings, first and foremost I try to
make my decisions based on what the racers
want. But it’s a fine line because we also have
to be profitable and I know exactly what my
bosses at Sonoma are looking for also. We’re in
business to make a profit, but on the same token
I want to do things that are from the racer’s
perspective first and foremost. It’s a fine line
SEIPEL GREW UP GOING TO THE RACES WITH HIS
PARENTS, TED AND GEORGIA, WHO BOTH BRACKET
RACED ALONG THE WEST COAST FOR DECADES.
GEORGIA ALSO WENT INTO TRACK MANAGEMENT,
HOLDING THE TRACK MANAGER POST AT SONOMA
FOR 29 YEARS BEFORE HANDING THE REINS TO
KYLE IN 2018.
having to teeter-totter there.
My mom ran Fremont from 1983 until it closed
in 1988. I was born in ‘71. I didn’t play any sports.
I was at the track essentially every weekend any-
where in Northern California. Four decades of
being around the track, there were things I defi-
nitely liked. In racing, I always try to take some
things from different racers and put it into my
program so I can be the best racer I can. I do the
same thing from the track manager standpoint
to where all these different tracks I’ve been to, I
try to take a little bit from each track and try to
incorporate it into Sonoma.
You’ve spent a lot of time at that one track, but a lot of
your time over the last 10 years has been spent promoting
races on a national level, trying to draw racers from all
over the country to races at Bristol, Las Vegas and GALOT.
How has it been different to focus on that one track with
that one group of racers and hone in on what they want?
It’s a whole different model, that’s for sure. One
thing I learned, regardless of if you’re at the local
level or the Spring Fling, is that racers come to the
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