Bristol International Dragway

History

Larry Carrier, Carl Moore and Hal Hamrick built Bristol International Dragway for about $1 million, and it opened under NHRA sanction in 1965. At the time it was considered a state-of-the-art super dragway, the best in the country. A 60-foot-wide strip a mile long was cut through a valley on 500 acres, with a 20-foot return road, a spectator crossover bridge and a four-story tower holding offices, suites, timing and media rooms. Raised seating for 15,000 gave fans a view of the whole quarter-mile, and the elevation was 1,445 feet. Maynard Rupp of Michigan won top fuel at the first Spring Nationals, June 3-7, 1965, with 7.59 seconds at 203.160 MPH. It was the first major NHRA event east of the Mississippi, and WJCW in Johnson City broadcast it live, which was rare for drag racing on radio. The strip sat between two mountains, and the way the noise echoed earned it the name Thunder Valley.

NHRA left after the 1967 Spring Nationals, and AHRA sanctioned the event from 1968 to 1970. In 1971 Carrier started the International Hot Rod Association, which raced at Bristol until 1998. Bristol was IHRA’s flagship until Carrier sold the association to Billy Meyer in fall 1987 and Meyer moved its offices to Waco, Texas. Meyer sold IHRA to Jim Ruth and Ted Jones in the winter of 1989, and they moved it back to Bristol that year. Ruth died in 1990, and his sons Duane and Rick inherited it. They sold IHRA to a group of businessmen in 1993 but kept the dragway, and Bill Bader bought IHRA in 1997 and moved its headquarters to Norwalk. In 1996 Bruton Smith, who had also bought Bristol Motor Speedway, bought the dragway from the Ruth brothers and renamed it Bristol Dragway. Doug Herbert made the first 300 MPH pass there at the 1997 Spring Nationals, and Shirley Muldowney set a record of 302 MPH in the same qualifying round.

After the 1997 season the track closed for an $18 million rebuild, and the result is considered a new standard for NHRA tracks. Crews moved nearly a million cubic yards of earth for more pit and grandstand room and poured more than 15,000 cubic yards of concrete, including retaining walls the full length of the track. The new 3,800-foot dragway has 700 feet of concrete and sits at 1,475 feet, and the top end is 72 feet higher than the start to help slow cars past the finish. More than 20 miles of power, communication and scoring cable are buried to keep the setting clean, and a $500,000 Musco lighting system went in. The pro pits hold 100 cars and transporters and the sportsman area up to 500 cars. The four-story tower has 21 suites, a control room, a conference room, elevators and a covered observation deck for almost 800 people, with an unbroken glass wall along the track side. Two tunnels run from the grandstands to the pits.

Bristol hosted NHRA’s first Winston Showdown in 1999, matching top fuel dragsters against funny cars for the first time. John Force won it, beating Bob Vandergriff with a 5.470 at 262.18 MPH after smoking his tires. After the Showdown in 1999 and 2000, the track held its first NHRA points race since 1967, the 2001 O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. After the 2004 season a new Terrace section of nearly 3,500 seats went in above the grandstand, topped by corporate suites, and the Thunder Valley Club doubled from 500 to 1,000, adding nearly 5,000 seats in all for 2005. The Thunder Valley Nationals ran in April or May for several years, moved to mid-June in 2010 and are now held on Father’s Day weekend as the Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.