BRISTOL, BELOVED! – LOOKING BACK AT THE COLORFUL HISTORY OF THE TRACK

Bristol International Dragway. Personally, what I remember most is how wet and green the whole facility was. The IHRA Spring Nationals, traditionally held the first weekend in June, were to start the next day, and the usual rain in the East Tennessee mountains was all new to me. As I recall now, the main reason I made the trip was to go to a drag racing memorabilia show that Don Gillespie had decided to host, and my number of bidders in the Northeast told me that worth making an 8 hour drive for . At the time, I was publishing a little magazine called Quarter Milestones dedicated to those racing artifacts, and I also got photo credentials to try and get some features on the car for one of the many car magazines then offered on the newsstand.

I entered this huge dark tower nestled in the center of a narrow valley where a young lady gave me a photo waiver to sign and a press badge. At the time, there were several small streams running around the site as well as a substantial area of ​​lowland marsh, the area south of the tower which is currently the pits for the athletes for this weekend’s NHRA Supergrip Thunder Valley Nationals. This year, the event is now just a week off from when the original NHRA Springnationals was first held here in 1965.

Bristol was the heart of southern style drag racing and the IHRA cars were, quite frankly, insane. I had seen a few of them at Atco when Billy Meyer owned the International Hot Rod Association for one fateful year, but Bristol was the true representative of the IHRA. Bristol racing facility builder Larry Carrier founded that sanctioning body in late 1970 after realizing that neither NHRA’s Wally Parks nor AHRA’s Jim Tice were doing things his way . As a result, the IHRA also took a bunch of big-name tracks back in those days and offered world-class racing, but by the early 1990s, it was more known for every type of tool that came out of the woodwork for this race.

In addition to Top Fuel, which had fans on the fence for Saturday, Pro Mod had just arrived and Top Sportsman was still crazy. Although it now runs on the NHRA circuit, the latter was an IHRA exclusive back then, essentially a no-holds-barred dial-in “doorslammer” class of cars that had evolved into a slugfest for a Quick 8 program that usually move the cars. unranked from #33 to about #40 in the TS program. And the term doorslammer is used loosely because there were many cars that were a shadow of anything stock. Thought even the 8.90 index Quick Rod class still had fun old cars and pro gear running in it. Bristol was still historic in appearance then and a great place to see it happen.

And the bleachers… wide slabs of aged but solid concrete filled with hard drinkers, country girls, toddlers and all sorts of craziness. At one of those events, I remember talking to a Sullivan County sheriffs officer on Sunday morning, remarking that it must have been a little crazy the night before with the rain and crowd control. Without smiling, he looked at me behind his mirrored sunglasses and said nonchalantly, “Yeah, I had to wipe the hood of the car on someone’s face.” The cops are the ONLY thing that has stopped the Bristol stands from going completely berserk. Most of the IHRA staff rarely went up there on Saturday night…

The first weekend was significant for a second reason. All the top names in the drag racing media were also here. I met Dave Wallace of HOT ROD magazine fame, Jon Asher, a longtime so racing magazine contributor, and Steve Collison, editor of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated, all here in person for the first time. There were also a variety of characters like me, back in the beginning. One of them was this kid named Bobby Bennett, who, of course, now manages all this media work. If you wanted to see how the ‘other half’ of the drag racing world lived, a Bristol drag race was a must.

It was love at first sight for me. I loved the environment, the history and the noted sound. I would later note that if I had a choice between doing this and Indy, I was going to go south. To be brutally honest, though, my action photography was still “developing.” I’d certainly get lucky with every roll of film, but those early images are buried here in one container or another, and while I wanted to add something to spice things up, locating them proved impossible. It would probably be gross anyway…
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Fast forward to early 1996. Don Gillespie was moving into the editor’s chair of the IHRA magazine and needed a cohort. I was living in Pennsylvania, working a dead-end job in finance, and had begun to avidly research racing history. And my photo skills had improved enough that Don offered me the job. Full-time drag racing? Oh yeah, yeah, that would be a pay cut, and Drag Review magazine was six issues behind!). In June I returned to Bristol to live and began a whirlwind tour that took me to some of the IHRA’s most outlying circuits, a few that even hosted national events, as well as overnight driving from Sunday to Monday to get one magazine a week. for most of that summer and fall. Shortly after I arrived, a disastrous financial decision made in Steele, Alabama, right before I was hired, there was a major shakeup at the top of the company, but no pay came back, and that fall, things balanced and my wife and three small children. they were also in town.

So the IHRA office on the Bristol Dragway property was separated from that tower and right next to a 1970s “Rockford Files” set — faux wood paneling, small office spaces, exposed secretaries. We kept our noses down, got our magazine, and at the end of the year he took over an oil company called Prolong. Gillespie was transitioning into PR and working on his epic multi-volume series at the Lions Drag Strip in California. Editor Leonard Emanuelson, another HOT ROD veteran, was appointed to oversee Drag Review. I became editor and the Bristol office was now bubbling with new found enthusiasm. There was money for sure, but Prolong didn’t “last long” and my wife and I had just bought a small farm 30 miles from the track when Bill Bader, owner of Norwalk Raceway, bought the entire IHRA operation. At the end of that winter, he announced that everything would be moving to Ohio, and he assumed I was okay with that. However, my wife and I decided we weren’t interested in moving north again, so I worked under contract as an editor until 1997. The late Mr. Bader, who was a good guy, really wanted me up there , full time, if it were to continue. And that was the end, and the Dragway was also in transition…

Bristol Dragway became part of some unexpected but entirely predictable forces. NASACR was at its peak and Bruton Smith had added Bristol Motor Speedway to his family of tracks. The drag strip would become a nice parking lot for the race weekend at the adjacent circuit (so the rumor went). However, these concerns remained unfounded as Smith and the NHRA came to an agreement and instead the track received a massive makeover. Gone are the concrete stands and tons of earth moved to literally raise the valley. The track surface has been moved both higher and back and tilted a few degrees to the right to get rid of a mountain curve in the staging area (the catch fence is there now).
After $18 million in modifications, the new Bristol Dragway hosted two NHRA All-Star races in 1999 and 2000, and then became the home of the Thunder Valley Nationals. I lived close but wasn’t always around due to my employment in the car magazine business which wasn’t fully focused on drag racing. If I happened to be at home listening from my mountaintop on the very Sunday afternoon when this race was on, I thought I could faintly hear the gas cars.

By 2024, it was a great reality to see Bristol Dragway become what it is now. NHRA’s world-class facility is still a must-see for many fans. History still seeps from the surrounding mountains, the echo that created the nickname “Thunder Valley” remains evident, and race fans enjoy the weather and the spectacle. In 2023, for the first time in over 30 years, I did not do an NHRA event due to my work at the now defunct Mopar Action magazine. Unfortunately, even that print job was destroyed last November. I got here this morning in the cool mountain air and am looking forward to being at the Supergrip Thunder Valley Nationals this weekend to catch up with friends, watch some solid racing and reminisce about the past that is Bristol Dragway.