Another reason Pacific Raceways is a joke

[S Kelly]

Wow, what potential and what a waste. It would have been one thing to advertise a "fun only" race and let everyone know that there wouldn't be payout, just trophies and "baskets", but instead they decided deception was the better approach.There is no way to gain racers trust when they do that kind of stuff, and they just seem to do it over and over.

This facility has seemed cursed for the last dozen to 15 years, no matter who is running it. I committed to never attending another bracket race there again after a horribly ran event in 1997, which involved a fist fight in the pits to kick off the morning, continued with a drug-raged lunatic doing "Rockford Files" reverse donuts at the head of the staging lanes, and ended 3 rounds shy of finishing eliminations as curfew hit at 11:00PM for which we had to split the overall purse 6 ways (something all of you local racers have NEVER experienced, right?)! I also said I wouild only come back for Divisionals and if I was fortunate enough to race the National, which I have 2 times. And I kept my word, until this year.

A group of 3 really respected drag racers got together a plan to promote a big buck bracket race called the Sportsnationals, held this year in August at Pacific Raceways. I will leave their names out of it unless one of them choose to post a reply because they may wish to remain anonymous, though all of us in the NW know who they are. They worked tirelessly to organize the event and put up their own money for a guaranteed purse. They advertised and promoted the event to the point a large group of racers (both divisional and bracket racers) ended up showing up for the event, primarily because everyone believed that Pacific Raceways turned over the reins to this group and we all knew we could trust them, even if we didn't have trust in the track.

If it wasn't for the success of a fair bit of the racers in our race group, getting to hang out with a lot of friends and well respected racers that we don't often get to see, and getting to meet some of the local Pacific Raceways racers who I've since become good friends with, the weekend could have been considered a mess; much like the last time I attended in 1997. I don't know a lot of specific details, but the week started out with Pacific Raceways telling the trio of racers/promoters who organized the event that they had to relinquish control of the event and turn it over to the track. This was after they had received enough pre-race entries to realize that the race would be a financial success, by the way. These guys reluctantly agreed and still managed to act like professionals; I think primarily so that all of the rest of us racers would have an opportunity to participate in a big money bracket race (thanks Gentlemen). There was also a couple of pretty ugly cheating accusations that came very close to physical confrontations, mostly because of the track lacking a technical inspector who could emphatically state whether the issues on the vehicles in question (one a friend's and one mine) were legal or not. Of course they were legal but it took way too long to ascertain that and tempers flaired in the process. In fairness, there were also parts failures and attrition and an eye injury (mine) that had nothing whatsoever to do with the track, so it may feel like it was worse than it was.

I personally enjoyed tremendous success at this event having both of my entries in my one car make it to the final round on Friday night where I raced myself. It was a special moment that I was glad to just be a part of, much less having been the one in the final. It's hard to believe after the success I had at that event that I am back to my committment of 1997, to not attend an event there unless it is a divisional or national. I think I would consider it if we had some kind of assurance that the same group could put together the same event and not have the rug pulled out from under them like was done this year. I hope that is a possibility.

Steve Kelly
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