Drag racers apparently don’t have the market cornered on being resourceful. When rains deluged Odessa, Missouri, the location of Flying H Dragstrip, a significant number of racers were unable to get their cars to the staging lanes, much less unloading out of their trailers.
Flying H Dragstrip, located outside Kansas City, debuted on Thursday as part of the NHRA’s Division 5 schedule. They are hosting a double-divisional, which is two events in one weekend.
Friday morning, the racers parked in the upper grassy area woke up to flooded grounds. The initial weather report offered moderate rains wrapped into a significant thunderstorm. However, the storm dropped nearly two hours on grounds where its sod was still in the curing process.
Former NHRA Division 5, Rob Park, at Flying H under no official capacity, went to work with division director Nick Duty to make the best of a challenging situation. While Duty was at work coordinating a Friday schedule that would only feature both Top Alcohol divisions, Comp Eliminator and Sportsman Motorcycle, Park was busy helping to coordinate trucks filled with gravel, building roads for the displaced sportsman racers getting to the lanes without turning the track into a mod-bog course.
Even NHRA President Glen Cromwell was in the trenches on Friday at Flying H Dragstrip.
“Rain hit us pretty hard last night, and while they predicted a little bit, I think they got an inch and a half, which wasn’t predicted,” Parks said. “It was unfortunate.
Interestingly, the hardest hit area had the highest pit space elevation in the facility.
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“Unfortunately, with the grass, it hadn’t been established yet,” Parks explained. “It’s been a constant building process. They seeded it earlier this spring. It just hadn’t seeded completely yet.”
Parks said a drag racer, Rick Wilson, has helped with much of the Flying H construction. He was instrumental in bringing in his equipment and gravel and helping out.
“They’ll make it to where racers can get in and out,” Parks said. “This is just another situation where drag racers are facing a bad situation. They make the most of it. We’ve all been here before over the years, right?
“It’s not the end of the world. We will be fine. It’s supposed to get hot. It’ll eventually dry out. Everybody just needs to be patient and really we’re thankful for what Scott Higgs and Flying H are doing here.”
The event, regardless of how badly Mother Nature tried to rain on the parade, was deemed a success, with 555 entries.
“We’re making the best out of a bad situation, getting as much run today as we can, and we’ll hit the ground running tomorrow and get this double-header finished up,” NHRA D5 director Nick Duty said. “We are running the classes that we know we can complete today. We are trying to let this place dry out a little bit, so we’re not giving up. We’ve got a midnight curfew, and we’re going to give it all we’ve got to get anything we can down the racetrack today.”
