Atco closing ?

[CMcAllister]

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

It's like a Stock Market crash......

E-town
Atco maybe/probably
Maple Grove deal fell apart for some unkown reason and who knows where that will end up...

Etown - was already done. The junkyard thing doesn't appear to have happened. Now they are drifting, MX and road racing. Dumped drag racing for some reason(s).
Maple Grove - who is going to spend money for or finance a business you can't operate or know when you might be able to operate?
Atco - remains to be seen. Taxes, regs, expenses, not being able to open, all making it not feasible or more of a PIA than it's worth to continue.

As things "open up" - not sure how they call it that when they only allow you to have 50% of customers, if that - we are beginning to see the number of stores, restaurants, entertainment venues and other businesses who won't be reopening.

[Frank Castros]

We never went as fast anywhere else as we did at Atco. The air and traction was amazing. At one test session John Armstrong's Camaro and the Lydon & Johnson 'Cuda stood up so high I thought they where going to flip over. Ask Wes Leopold, he was there that day too. It was BAD fast!

[Rich Biebel]

Ed East coast cars won all over the country in the old days.
The biggest issue I would say was you saw racers struggle in conditions they were just not used to. Setting records was a pride thing and sure some could not run on records they had set at fast tracks when they went to places they were not familiar with.

George Cureton, Bill Izykowski, Tritak and Morgan, Larry Lombardo......All East Coasters that were fast and record holders and did pretty well anywhere they went.....just to name a few....

I can recall watching the big name racers from Div 2 run in super hot weather and scratching my head wondering how they ran so well. They were used to racing in bad weather

We went to Indy in 1966 and it was hot and muggy and our car was running very slow compared to at home tracks. Being young and inexperienced, we did not know how to try and adjust for that bad weather. Carb did not like the air out there and we had pretty much nothing to try and tune it for that air. Maybe some guys you saw experienced the same kind of things.

Englishtown is indeed now a CAR storage facility. They have steadily parked cars on pavement as that was a requirement from what I have read. Yes they still have other motorsports events but drag racing is gone and is not coming back.


Atco and Maple Grove are still operating. Maple Grove to open this weekend and Atco has been open a few weeks....

What happens to those 2 tracks in the future is unclear right now...