TonyKarter
04-28-2009, 05:26 PM
You Texas and Louisiana G8 racers should plan a trip to the best kept secret in East Texas. Ben Bruce Memorial Airpark Raceway is a very beautiful place. I'd heard about it for years from my friends that race now and then, and last Saturday I went to see for myself. It's like being in a park. It's an airport that was permanently converted to a dragstrip, wonderful concrete, grandstands better than HRC, all aluminum. Main grandstand is BEHIND the starting line, right in the middle of the runway! The cars come under it and through a portal in it's base. Other grandstands (smaller) on both sides of the strip. You can feel them through the grandstand before you can see them. You are darn near on top of the starting line, and all three stands offer a much closer place to sit and watch than HRC does.
This place is in the middle of the woods, 60-70 foot pine trees safely line both sides of the strip, both sides of the pit area. Thick San Augustine grass grows right up to the side of the concrete, more grass than concrete really, about 40-50 yards of it on both sides of the runway, then the woods start. I saw MANY families 20 yards in the woods yet close to their racing trailers, BBQ pits smoking, hammocks strung between trees, fully shaded, thick pine straw for carpet, no dirty ground and having a great time. It's like this for 3/8 mile behind the staging area. Beats the heck out of sweating all day on top of hot asphalt. Garbage receptacles everywhere, and I don't remember seeing any garbage on the ground.
This is the type of place you would want to bring your family and make a day of it. The wife MIGHT just like the long days at the track waiting for you to cycle through the staging area if she and the kids had a place like this lounge around in. The kids had the run of the woods, and what kid couldn't find a hundred things to occupy them when turned loose in the woods.
Test and Tune every Saturday starting at 3pm -until. $20 spectators $10, under 12 free. Clean bathrooms, good menu at the concession stand and a snowcone stand as well.
The regulars tell me that the staging lanes are seldom more than 5-10 cars deep, except when they are having a special event of some kind, about every third Saturday.
So who's game?
This place is in the middle of the woods, 60-70 foot pine trees safely line both sides of the strip, both sides of the pit area. Thick San Augustine grass grows right up to the side of the concrete, more grass than concrete really, about 40-50 yards of it on both sides of the runway, then the woods start. I saw MANY families 20 yards in the woods yet close to their racing trailers, BBQ pits smoking, hammocks strung between trees, fully shaded, thick pine straw for carpet, no dirty ground and having a great time. It's like this for 3/8 mile behind the staging area. Beats the heck out of sweating all day on top of hot asphalt. Garbage receptacles everywhere, and I don't remember seeing any garbage on the ground.
This is the type of place you would want to bring your family and make a day of it. The wife MIGHT just like the long days at the track waiting for you to cycle through the staging area if she and the kids had a place like this lounge around in. The kids had the run of the woods, and what kid couldn't find a hundred things to occupy them when turned loose in the woods.
Test and Tune every Saturday starting at 3pm -until. $20 spectators $10, under 12 free. Clean bathrooms, good menu at the concession stand and a snowcone stand as well.
The regulars tell me that the staging lanes are seldom more than 5-10 cars deep, except when they are having a special event of some kind, about every third Saturday.
So who's game?