Jason Peterson was running around U.S. 131 Motorsports Park, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on a race he has wanted for nearly 25 years.
Getting an NHRA national event to the Michigan drag strip was always the destination. The path Peterson and his wife, Stephanie, traveled to get there wasn’t remotely the one he had planned.
It included an NHRA contract sitting on his desk, a family dinner that convinced him to turn it down, a handshake and proposed contract with IHRA, another deal that went nowhere, and finally a call back to NHRA looking for something considerably smaller than what he originally rejected.
Then the whole thing turned again.
Within 20 minutes of an announcement involving Maple Grove Raceway, Peterson had the national event he thought he had surrendered months earlier. Only this time, U.S. 131 wasn’t getting just another stop on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tour.
Peterson’s first NHRA national event will open the 2026 Countdown to the Championship.
“It’s starting to hit me, yes,” Peterson said when asked whether it had finally hit him.
For Peterson, the reality has been a long time coming.
“It’s something that we’ve dreamed about for 25 years,” Peterson said. “I mean, not so much the countdown deal because that all changed throughout the whole deal, but just even hosting the national event. We’ve been courted and been trying to do it for a while, but it just never happened.”
Why it didn’t happen sooner remains something of a mystery to Peterson. U.S. 131 has hosted major drag races for decades. The track hosted the Popular Hot Rodding Nationals, a prominent NHRA Division 3 points race that later became an IHRA national event in 1986. IHRA returned in 2002 with a different event and eventually made Martin a regular stop.
The facility was there and so were the spectators. The only thing missing was an NHRA national event.
“It wasn’t anything on our side,” Peterson said. “This goes back to even the Tom Compton days and whatever so I don’t know. I don’t know what their hold up was. They never gave me an answer.”
Eventually, Peterson got something better than an answer. He got a contract and discussions had progressed far enough by the spring of 2025 that the race Peterson had pursued for decades was suddenly sitting in front of him.
“Glen Cromwell, Josh Peterson and I were actually talking; it was early last season, April, May, that I had a contract on my desk in May of last year,” Peterson said. “And we were going through all the procedures and going through everything and starting to dot some Is and cross some Ts.”
This wasn’t the national event U.S. 131 eventually received.
Peterson said the original proposal was for a much earlier race, likely in June. That would have put U.S. 131 only weeks ahead of the NHRA national event at Norwalk, Ohio, roughly four hours away.
Peterson talked with Bill Bader Jr. about the proximity.
“But it was only three weeks in front of Norwalk,” Peterson said. “And of course, when I started to talk to Billy about this stuff, of course he was not in favor of it whatsoever, which I can understand. Three weeks between two national events, only four hours away. But that didn’t happen.”
The reason it didn’t happen had nothing to do with NHRA pulling the offer. Peterson pulled himself out.
After waiting for what seemed like an eternity for an NHRA national event, he sat down to dinner with his family and decided something about the deal didn’t feel right.
“Samuel, my son, Stephanie and I, were sitting at dinner one night, and we all looked at each other and said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but something doesn’t feel right,'” Peterson said. “So I backed out, if you can believe that.”
That decision could have been the end of the story. Instead, it became the first turn in a pathway Peterson couldn’t possibly have mapped out beforehand.
He began talking with IHRA leadership and believed another option was taking shape.
“This was all when the Darryl [Cuttell] thing was happening, and I had had a couple of meetings with Darrell, shook hands on some things, was feeling okay about it,” Peterson said.Â
Peterson wasn’t casually exploring IHRA. He got far enough into the process to submit a contract for an event at U.S. 131. That contract came back.
“I’m glad that thing got sent back,” Peterson said.
The NHRA opportunity Peterson had rejected was gone, too. Peterson didn’t blame anyone for that. He had made the decision, and he knew NHRA couldn’t be expected to leave a national-event slot waiting in case he changed his mind.
Then he changed his mind.
“It was probably three or four weeks before PRI that I called [NHRA D3 Director] William Tharpe, knowing that I wasn’t on the national event list, That was really off the table. We owned that, that was our issue.”
This time Peterson wasn’t asking for his national event back. Instead, he was trying to get a Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event.
“But I thought, ‘Well, shoot, if I can get a Lucas race for ’26, we’ll switch,'” Peterson said. “He had a date. And then the good Lord working in his ways. I had two open dates in ’26 at that time. The one date that William threw out was our Lucas Oil date that we just had.”
That was enough to put U.S. 131 back into the NHRA fold. Peterson went to the PRI Show prepared to make that move public. The track announced its switch on Thursday, and at that point, the national event Peterson once had sitting on his desk still wasn’t part of the deal.
Then Cuttell’s acquisition of Maple Grove Raceway changed everything. Maple Grove had been the traditional opening stop of the Countdown, and NHRA needed somewhere else to begin its playoffs.
Peterson had spent plenty of time trying to get his foot in the door, and in one fell swoop, the door swung wide open.
“And truthfully, after that Maple Grove announcement from IHRA, within 20 minutes, we had the national event secured,” Peterson said.
There might not be a better description of Peterson’s journey than that. Twenty-five years of trying and twenty minutes to seal it. Peterson couldn’t have imagined what transpired after that. Instead of being just a middle-of-June national event sandwiched on the schedule, U.S. 131 Motorsports Park would host the opening race of the NHRA’s playoffs.
“We’re very fortunate the way things rolled out and we’re very thankful, and we’re hoping we can take this thing to the next level now,” Peterson said.
Peterson’s attention has moved from getting the race to getting U.S. 131 ready for it. And, for all the drama involved in landing the event, preparing the facility has been considerably more straightforward.
“Really, the only thing we’ve really done is the asphalt for the pro guys,” Peterson said. “Other than that, we’re pretty well set.”
U.S. 131 Motorsports Park, Peterson believes, didn’t need a massive makeover as it was already up to the task. Decades of hosting major events have seasoned Peterson and his team into race-ready mode. That includes a balance between spectator seating and parking that he believes will work even with the crowd expected for the Countdown opener.
“We get questions like, ‘Are you going to put in more seating? ‘ No,” Peterson said. “You can put in more parking. Well, no, because we’ve really got a perfect scenario, at least for us anyway, is that when we run out of parking, we’re out of seats. And if we’re out of seats, we’re out of parking.”
“There’s really nothing we can do. We expect Saturday to be sold out, for sure.”
Getting those spectators onto the property has required more attention.
Rather than processing everyone through the track’s traditional front gate, U.S. 131 plans to move vehicles directly onto the property and establish additional gates closer to the track.
“Getting in is not going to be an issue because we’re not going to stop anybody at the front, what we call our front normal gate,” Peterson said. “We’re parking everybody, and we’re making new gates down on the track. So everybody’s just going to drive right in and park.”
Peterson knows getting thousands of people out after the race will still require patience.
“We’re going to alleviate that bottleneck on the way in,” Peterson said. “Now on the way out, I mean, God, everybody has issues getting out of places. I don’t care where you go, in my opinion.”
Most of the physical work was handled during the spring. The list is short enough now that Peterson can finally look beyond what needs to be built, paved or moved and recognize what is about to happen.
“We joke now that we’re on the radar now,” Peterson said. “During the televised national events, they usually do three events out, and we’re on there now. It’s real.”
Peterson also has veteran drag racing executive Steve Earwood, his father-in-law, working alongside him as a consultant.
Earwood’s years inside NHRA and track management provide Peterson with someone who understands what a national event requires before the first professional car ever fires.
“He’s just a wealth of knowledge.” Peterson said. “He’s old school, which is good. Of course, some things have changed, and he realizes that as well. We’ve got a really good working relationship and can talk a lot of things about each other and be honest with each other.”
Michigan weather remains the one item Peterson can’t put on a preparation list and check off.
September has always been a gamble, but Peterson points to years of running the track’s Funny Car Nationals just after Labor Day without consistent weather problems. Ending the season at Labor Day was a staple in original owner John Grivens’ playbook.
“Is it a concern in the back of your head? Yes,” Peterson said. “But it hasn’t been terrible. I mean, we usually run our Funny Car Nationals that we didn’t do this year the weekend before. So we usually run it the weekend right after Labor Day with really no issues per se.
“It’s a good statement that John probably had, but I’m going to say the percentages have been more in our favor than the weatherman’s in the past.”
Peterson has spent enough time worrying about things he couldn’t control. Now he wants racers and fans to see why U.S. 131 was worth the wait.
“I know everybody’s going to be awestruck,” Peterson said. “And actually Glen Cromwell said this probably a month ago when he did his site visit here, ‘Why weren’t we here 10 years ago?’ Meaning that everybody that’s been here has been so impressed with the facility and just don’t know why we’re just now coming to this.”
