A Maritime Major! « DragRaceCanada.com

A Maritime Major!

by editor on Jun.01, 2016, under Lucas Oil Hotzone

Far Eastern Canada’s Miramichi Dragway will host it’s biggest and most prestigious drag racing event ever this coming summer….

The facility which is located in the beautiful province of New Brunswick — has landed a NHRA Northeast Division National Open race for this season – coming July 29-31st.

That race will in fact be one of five different NHRA National Open events in Canada this season within NHRA’s welcomed push for more of a Canadian presence. (NHRA National Opens are also scheduled for Mission BC, Medicine Hat AB, Cayuga ON and Napierville PQ).

But the fact now that Miramichi Dragway has qualified for an event of this caliber, only came after a lot of work and improvements were made to the facility. Most of the credit for that must be directed to Rodolphe Savie who took over as track owner five years ago.

“After Rodolphe took over the track in 2011 we began our journey and we set a goal to get the track sanctioned with NHRA,” explained Miramichi Dragway’s Bruce Howatt. “We knew that we would need to make some improvements to the facility in order to achieve that goal. Those improvements came over the last four years including a new timing system (Port-A-Tree), new sound system, new Tower and NHRA national event sized LED scoreboards. We also completed major upgrades to the track itself — including 2000 feet of additional shutdown and 530 feet of concrete in each lane. We also made improvements to the existing guardrail.”

Bruce added that the detailed discussions with NHRA’s Northeast Division Director began last year and the agreement for this race was finalized last February. “Dave Mohn and his NHRA team have been a pleasure to work with. They have really helped us get started off on the right foot and by now agreeing to allow us to host a PC Richards National Open at our track!”

Expectations are that participation for this event (both racer and fan) may very well be record setting for the facility. “We have had some fairly large independent events the past couple years (DownEast Nationals, Atlantic Canada All Out and Fall Brawl) but we think this event will be one of the biggest ever. Our plans are to grow it into an even larger event in future years,” Bruce added.

The NHRA PCRichard.com Northeast National Open will feature primary competition within it’s marquee Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series level Sportsman divisions, namely Top Sportsman/Dragster, Stock/Super Stock and it’s indexed Super Street, Super Gas and Super Comp classes.

“We are expecting to have over 200 race teams participating at this event, Howatt added. “We are fortunate to have three strong associations already in Atlantic Canada who support us.” (Atlantic Canada Stock/SuperStock Association, The Atlantic Pro-Tree Association (SG,SC,SST) and the Atlantic Drag Racing Association).

Drag racing fans can expect to see some top quality drag cars from all across Eastern Canada and Northeastern US. Eastern-based Canadian drivers like Mark Howes, Bruce Riley, John Armstrong, Fred Thibeault, Dave Anthony, Doug Forbes and Dave Powell are just a few of the names pre-registered.