It's official. LACR will close at the end of July.
Pontiac Drag Days will have events Sat June 9 and Sun July 22.
July 22 will be the last PDD this year. Next year is in limbo.

According to Dave of PDD Bernie is moving to AL.
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All So Cal wants to do for racers is issue traffic tickets to increase revenue.

Sounds like PDD talks with Funtucky didn't work out.

I guess its back to the streets since Funtucky doesn't want street legal drags either.

 

 

That stinks! I was hoping PDD would come to Fontana so it would be closer to us.

 

Found this on another board.

 

No big loss for me...too far to drive for such miserable conditions

 

But it is a big loss to all of us racers!! Less tracks means more idiots out street-racing, and that brings bad publicity to our hobby. Then idiot politicians create more stupid laws to keep us from modifying our cars.
Not to mention that means more cars at Fontana for us to fight for tech cards.

 

I've gotta somewhat disagree, Kevin. Yes, it's sad that a(nother) track will be closing, and yes, street racing definitely gives the activity a bad name and provides fuel for the politicians. But the lack of this track(especially), or most any track, for that matter, isn't likely to cause a noteable increase in street racing.

Having tracks to race on has never curbed the stupidity because most street racers don't do tracks. As for those who do use tracks... where do you think they practice? They prepare for going to the tracks by racing on the streets. But I'd think a good portion of the track racers are smart enough to not use the streets... and are prolly into 'bigger' things than street racing anyway--hence their attending the tracks.

And since most street racing occurs late at night when tracks aren't open anyway, I don't think the closing a track will make any difference in the amount of street racing that occurs... at least, not this track up here.

Yes, it might increase the 'traffic' at Fontana. But for the people from here, it's about the same distance to either Fontana or Famoso, so I'd think they'd be more likely to go to Famoso, especially since that's such a nice facility... and a much nicer drive.

Where I grew up(Indy), people would go out to the 'boonies' late at night to race, where the only people at risk were the racers, themselves(and the 'attendies'). Being out there also kept them 'off the radar,' so-to-speak. At least, up here(already in the boonies, lol), we have that... endless miles of desert roads, not that they take advantage of them.

Actually, with the near-endless supply of very cheap land up here far from uncivilization, the opening of another track could seem realistic. Then if someone were to put a 50's-style drive-in restaurant(like an A&W, or the 'modern-day' Sonix) next to the track, it would prolly be a pretty hoppin' place to go.

 

Las Vegas solved the problem by having night street legal racing. Starts at 9 or 10 pm 2 or 3 nights a week.
The City of LV and LVMS got together in order to curtail street racing and it has been effective.

 

I take it the owner is retiring from what I read.
Does anyone know who bought the property and what they are going to do with it?

It would be great is someone bought it and brought it up to good conditions.
Possibly do that 50's style burger joint thing and have hot rod race nights.
Hold a antique car show and let all entrants who want to give their car a run on the track a free run.

I just saw on the website....
Although this schedule indicates closure for this year, we are still in discussion with the City of Palmdale, LA World Airports and Fox Field as to relocation.

Bernie

So maybe they are still in talks??

 

Ahh....
I just read more of the story on their website.
Granite Construction owns the property.

Ya know... call me dumb but....
What does Granite do? They pave roads.
Why are they closing the track? To get the good stuff under the track to pave roads. Which is ten times more valuable than the track alone.

The track has been around since the 60's right?

So... why not Bernie and Granite form a partnership?
They buy some land out here in remote parts of the dirt and pave a new track?
They buy the land together, granite paves the track at cost, and make a nice new track and everyone wins.

Kinda strange that a paving company would miss a business opportunity like this. Apparantly none of the decision makers at Granite are into racing of any sorts.

If I were a big shot at Granite.... I'd go out to the track and talk to the racers and spectators and ask... what would you like to see if we were to build you a new track?

Who knows... maybe the AV Fairgrounds will pick up on this and give us a track.

We're not only talking about losing a race track... we're talking about lost revinue as well.

You have to look at what this track brought in on a yearly basis as it is and what could it bring in with better accomidations for both the racer and spectator.

One thing I'd like to see is a "port-a-potty" near the burn out area.
Just incase one of those first timers need to go before they step on the pedal.

That would be funny!
Especially seeing someone actually USE it!

 

If it was making any kind of money, it wouldnt be closing.

We need someone like Jay Leno or Chip Foose or some other auto celebrity to put up the money to create a track.

Lets face it. The land is more valuable as commercial, industrial, or residential than it is as a racetrack. The mining company has worked around the track this long, but they've run out of other places on their land to mine. The track land is next.

 

Slightly off-topic, but... same as with drive-in movie theaters, and junkyards could be down-the-road.

I hadn't thought about that until recently when I took a friend with me to a yard. He happens to be in real estate, so naturally, his first thought was something like, "this land has gotta be worth a lot more money than what this place probably makes."

It's scary to think about that, but it's prolly already been a topic of conversation in some areas.

On the otherhand, because there are so many salvage yards in business, one would think the business must be a profitable one, right? Hopefully that's the case.

 

The thing that your real estate friend did not take into consideration is that most pap yards are toxic waste meccas. How much oil is soaking into the ground around all of the cars in the yard? To clean up the typical junk yard to make it usable for development probably means digging ar least the top 20 feet of dirt off and hauling it away to a toxic waste dump and then having to replace the hauled off dirt with clean fill before a developer could even begin to build anything on the property.

 

About 20 years ago they had to pave wrecking yards to prevent any more product entering the water table.
ALL wrecking yards have monitoring wells around them.
If you buy a former wrecking yard, auto repair or gas station you better get a lifetime agreement from the seller indemenifing yourself from toxic cleanup.
That one reason the wrecking yards are still there. The cost of clean up before sale.

 

They didn't want us there, they didn't want to bother with trying to organize our group to make runs

 

Just that many more people will be in line at Fontucky...

TA