I'm not sure on it, either. George Howard may have sold it. He has Bama Dragway back, I don't know what happened to Bernie Longjohn. Maybe he's taking over Huntsville?
I went to George Howard's website and this is what I found out: George's lease on Huntsville Dragway was suddenly "shortened" {His own words} Rumor has it that owner Roy Burchel will open it next season. There has also been talk that some guy called "Chicken Man"s son will run it next year. Only thing that I know for sure other than that is there has been a bunch of landowners that built subdivisions around close to the track have been trying to close it down for some time now. They may have finally succeded. The forum is on www.GeorgeHowardRacing.com if you want to check it out yourself. George seemed rather vague in his description of what went on, saying more info to follw later.
I had wondered what happened to him, he left Bama suddenly. That track will be more like what he is used to, the guys here in Bama aren't as quick to react to somebody trying to better their racing. I think a lot of his ideas didn't go over too well with the local guys, and the racing suffered with low attendance because of it. I heard that one Sat night they only had three cars show up for the pro classes. A lot of the really fast cars won't run there, saying that the shutdown area is too short, and if you run out of it, you're in the river!
We used to visit Bama track regular, Until Bernie took over the track with his new rules. Seems the street cars from where he came from were not as fast as our red neck street cars. If you were faster than a 7.0-or 7.5 (i cant remember the exact time now) You had to have a minimum of a 4 point roll bar. Which i may need but dont have. Anyway you couldn't run on the track unless you had the proper equipment for the speed you were running. I have ran at every track with-en a 250 mile radius of home and was never told i couldn't run my street car because of this. Mid nite madness was the tracks biggest seller, But when the new rules was introduced that left all of our cars out. We did love to go to that track ( I enjoyed the 100 mile ride) But there was no need to go if we couldn't run. Now we may can go back.
Yeah, Bernie was running LACR, a NHRA track, before he came to Bama. I think he was trying to use NHRA style rules and the guys in this part of the country never had to go by any of that, it's always been "run what you brung". I think Holiday Beach Raceway is about the strictest on safety rules in this area, Bama, Winston County, Lassiter Mountain, and Baileyton have always been more "outlaw" or "redneck" tracks with less rules and safety checks. I helped with a car back in the late 80's that ran at Lassiter Mountain, we were never checked by any tech or anything. It was a street legal Camaro, but it ran 7's. Just unload it off the trailer, and run it. We only trailered it because if we broke anything, it was 80 miles back home. And I think you're right, the street cars around here seem to be faster than the ones on the left coast. Maybe because we don't have state inspections, guys tend to run more race stuff on the street? Or maybe we're just a little bit crazier?
Blown 5.0, next season if ya'll decide to go on a Sat, pm me and I'll give you my cell # and we can try to get together and go. JHodges is only about 5-6 miles from Bama, too, and would probably go with us....
I'll surely do that, Have they closed down for the winter yet? My Blower really likes the cooler air of the fall. Hey if yall want to we could all meet somewhere anyway.
Looks like the website is back up and says itl be open for test N tune in november! http://huntsvilledragway.com/
