Drag racing is legal again on Friday nights in Prince George.
After a one-year experiment to switch to Saturday nights, management at Northland Dodge Motorsports Park has decided to return to Fridays for its street legal drag racing sessions.
Smoking tires and the thunderous roar of racing engines will greet spectators this Friday from 6-9 p.m. in the first of 12 street legal events on the 2014 schedule at NCMP.
"We just found our car counts were a little low on Saturday nights, everyone seems to have plans during the weekend but on Fridays you can come out after work and go play," said NCMP general manager Landon LeDuke. "We definitely had larger car entry counts and spectator counts in the year previous. The weather looks good this weekend and there's been tons of activity on the Facebook page so I think we'll see a big crowd on Friday."
Friday night racing is on tap every Friday during the summer except on long weekends until Sept. 12 at NCMP, located 18 kilometres northwest of the city off Chief Lake Road. The track provides a safe, controlled area to race that allows drivers to test the speed limits of their vehicles as an alternative to taking unnecessary and illegal risks in a street race.
To enter, all street legal vehicles must pass a safety inspection. All race vehicles must be equipped with lights and other safety features required of ordinary passenger vehicles.
Last year the start of the street legal race season was delayed a month to allow repaving of the concrete start area. The $300,000 project, made possible by contributions from Rolling Mix Concrete and IDL Projects, left a new 720-foot strip of concrete that covers the staging area and the first third of the quarter-mile strip.
Northland's purchase of the track in 2012 and subsequent infrastructure improvements ended years of uncertainty about the future of the sport in Prince George and that has renewed local interest in drag racing. LeDuke knows of at least six bracket racers who have spent the winter building race cars to compete in NCMP's bracket race classes for the first time or are returning to the track after years of inactivity.
"It's building momentum, people see what's going on and want to be part of it," said LeDuke.
"As a rule, the Prince George club was sort of depleted over the last 10 or 15 years but it's gaining strength again and hopefully a lot of these guys are going to tour all over Western Canada and race on our behalf."
The track is hosting two big race events in 2014, including the third annual Full Blown weekend featuring the Rocky Mountain Nostalgia Funny Car race series and ET bracket classes, July 25-27. Also on the calendar is the Jet Set bracket event, Aug. 22-24, featuring jet-engined funny cars capable of speeds of 400 kilometres per hour.
The wireless timing system installed at NCMP two years ago has not performed up to expectations and is being replaced with a $25,000 hard-wired system, which should be in place by mid-July.
NCMP has ended its affiliation with the National Hot Rod Association. LeDuke said membership in the world's oldest and largest drag racing organization in the previous two years proved costly and failed to bring any special events to the city.
"It really only brought us 10 entries we wouldn't have normally got, so we felt it was best to focus on our local club and the guys in Fort St. John, Ashcroft and Edmonton and try and pull from areas regardless of their affiliations to come out and race and have fun," said LeDuke.
Several Prince George drag racers will be making the haul to Ashcroft this weekend for the Old Time Drags.
LeDuke tried to get Prince George back on the Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association map but was unable to work out details in time to make that happen. NCMP will team up with the Prince George Auto Racing Association for a mud bog event, July 12-13. Promoted by both racing organizations, the mud bog will utilize a swampy area north of the drag strip by the motocross track for timed side-by-side races in two distinct classes. Two additional mud bog lanes will be carved out once the road bans on rural roads are lifted.
"We'll have two styles of drag lanes - we'll have two deeper [36-inch] pits for guys that have the big lifter trucks and want to see if they can make it," said LeDuke. "We'll also have mud racing in an 18-inch deep pit for the 1,000-plus horsepower racing-built machines and they'll go through there in three seconds.
"We wanted to appeal to both crowds. There's a strong local bunch and the mud racing side doesn't really appeal to them, and there's also a mud racing circuit and the spectators enjoy seeing the big stuff go."
The motocross track will be lengthened and widened and brush will be cleared to make it more spectator-friendly for dirt bike racing. NCMP wants to eventually host a provincial or national motocross event there.
The motorsports park includes Dodge pond, a man-made lake stocked last year with rainbow trout. Northland Dodge owner Brent Marshall is building a 5,000 square-foot modular lodge for the 2015 Canada Winter Games that will be moved next year to the shore of the pond. It will serve as a fishing/recreational retreat facility for cancer patients and their families while they undergo radiation and chemotherapy treatments in Prince George.
The pond will be used this summer for three Go Fish BC learn-to-fish youth events hosted by the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C.
