(WHITESVILLE,KY)- The roar of a racing engine made it’s return to Haynes Station Road on Friday in Whitesville as track owner, Dakota Stroup unloaded his late model for pre-season testing. The 2022 CRA Champion was preparing his machine for next weekend’s events in Montgomery, Alabama.
The Stroup family has owned the Whitesville short track since the early 2000’s and has seen multiple promoters over their years of ownership. The track last ran a full season in 2021 under the direction of Owensboro businessman, Scott Slaton who decided not to lease the track for ’22. There were intentions of opening the track in 2022, but negotiations with an interested promoter fell through and didn’t come to fruition.
After climbing out of the cockpit of his late model after a test run, I asked Stroup about his plans for the legendary track. “We’ve redone all the pit bleachers with wood. We have redone the first section of bleachers closest to the pit area. We are redoing all of the other bleachers with steel structure and aluminum seats and floorboards that we have purchased from Gresham Motorsports Park. We’ve purchased a new scoreboard, new Whelen LED Caution lights, also from Gresham Motorsports park,” said Stroup.
Dakota Stroup smiles for a picture opportunity inside of his late model on Friday. (Blake Smith)
“Right now we are waiting on some engineering stuff for the bleachers. That has us at a stand-still right now, we’ve been working on that for a few months. We do plan to race. We are investing time and everything we are investing into this deal will be here for years to come. It’s not going to be a short lived deal, it will be for the future of this place,” said the track owner.
“We plan to do about 6-8 races a year and make them big shows. We are working with other tracks around us and try to race on their off weekends. In this day and time, no one has the funds or the want anymore to race every weekend. I’m at the race track a lot of weekends a year and that’s just what I see. We are going to put on some big shows, and some good shows.”
Stroup said the plan is to run CRA Street Stock, Crown Vics, CRA Late Models and standard mini stocks at Kentucky Motor Speedway
For updated information, check out the Kentucky Motor Speedway Facebook Page.
-Blake Smith, Host of “Let’s Talk Racing.”
