Drag Illustrated Issue 150, November 2019 | Page 53

DIALED IN
Hillside Hot Rods
Virginia’s Elk Creek Dragway stays fresh in 2019  By Van Abernethy
W
hen longtime racer Tony
Shinault took over as track manag-
er of Virginia’s Elk Creek Dragway
at the start of 2019, the most eye-
opening realization he experienced
was the cost of keeping a track in operation.
“When you’re a racer you don’t think about a
drum of VHT costing $800-$900, or think much
about insurance and equipment, you only see
the money flowing in, but never think about the
operating cost,” says Shinault, who’s had many
years of experience as a racer before taking a
break to manage the track.
November 2019
Elk Creek Dragway was opened in 1968 and
when its future was greatly in doubt decades later,
a corporation of 130 shareholders rallied together
in 1999 to keep this beloved, scenic eighth-mile
facility in operation. The track remains share-
holder-owned to this day. “Every dime gets put
back into the track,” Shinault says.
Thankfully, it’s been a great year for the facility
and several new ideas have been put in motion
and were well-received. In early September, the
track held a huge Labor Day weekend race that
featured a class called Killer Street, which had ac-
tually been a huge hit years ago. “Basically, Killer
Street is 10.5 and X275 radial cars that we used
to run here with great success,” Shinault says.
A total of 22 cars showed up for Killer Street
and spectator levels were phenomenal. “Nor-
mally, at most tracks you’re lucky if you can get
6-8 of those guys to show up,” he says. Shinault
fully expected the class to recapture the previous
fanfare, but what he didn’t foresee was how the
bracket car count sharply increased just by hav-
ing that one event. “We had 170 cars total, and
that’s getting into the range where that’s all we
can manage at this facility.”
Things got kicked off on Friday with test and
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