Onondaga Dragway

History

Brothers Ken and Harold Sears owned this strip twenty miles south of Lansing. In early May 1961 it only needed paving, with a target opening of May 14, but delays pushed that to July 2, when more than 7,500 people came. At first the strip was only 1,850 feet long, so cars had to brake hard to stay out of the sand trap, and the Searses later bought more land to lengthen it. Jet cars, wheelstanders and racers like Don Garlits and Dick LaHaie drew crowds. Announcer Jon Lundberg, later in the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, got his start there.

A racer who called Onondaga his home track in the ’60s remembered Art Arfons running there, and E. J. Potter’s ‘Bloody Mary’ bike with a stuck throttle mowing down trees after he bailed off. Top Fuel ran there, and Connie Kalitta was a regular. He remembered Super Stocks from the Ramchargers, Serbay Motors and Mad Moose, Bill Goodwin’s ‘64 Dodge ‘Raven,’ Gas Ronda’s Thunderbolt, Arnie ‘The Farmer’ Beswick, Dick Griffin’s turbo Corvair and Dick LaHaie’s ‘Sugar Cookie.’ Onondaga was one of the first tracks the Swiss Cheese Pontiacs ran, and an Adrian club called the Asphalt Angels fielded cars including a new ‘62 Impala 409. He raced his dad’s 1957 Olds and did best with his 425-horse 1966 Corvette.

Ken Sears, son of owner Ken, did odd jobs at the track as a boy. During a jet car race, the first run blew away the covers over the starting-line clock lights, so on the second run his father and uncle Harold each held one down. The covers stayed put, but both men lost their eyebrows and arm hair. The track ran bikini contests, a man blowing himself up in a wooden box on the starting line, and penny scrambles for kids. One Saturday night a streaker ran the whole quarter mile before anyone caught her, and Harold drove his Jeep down to give her a ride back and was a while getting back to the announcer’s booth. Ken said the brothers sold out as crowds dropped, or maybe because they tired of it. For a Mel Tillis concert on Memorial Day 1978, the track briefly became the Nashville Strip. A 1985 attempt to reopen failed.

In 2007 drag racer Dan Pranshka asked Ray Comer, who owned the site, if he could test on the old strip. Comer agreed, local racers started making weekend passes, and as their numbers grew the two asked the township to reopen the track. Temporary approval in 2010 set off a two-year fight with a small group of neighbors. Pranshka, Comer and others rebuilt the facility and reopened it in 2013, and in 2015 it got IHRA sanction as an eighth-mile track. Between 2010 and 2019 it opened and closed four times. It last reopened in August 2017 and closed again in March 2019 when the case went back to Ingham County Circuit Court. Pranshka died of cancer in January 2019, and in August Comer gave up the fight.

Woody Sloan, who also owns a strip in central Illinois, bought the track in late 2021 (late 2020 by another account). A 2023 report said it was now Sloan Onondaga Dragway and had been open two years, with successful swap meets, two Great Lakes Gassers shows a year, and apparently no sanction, favoring outlaw no-prep events. Detroit Hood TV, which sanctions its own no-prep racing, came over when Milan Dragway shut down over unpaid taxes, then went back to Milan. Sloan kept running his own no-prep races and worked with Johnny Quick of the Street Outlaws no-prep kings TV show. The report said Sloan had deeper pockets than earlier owners to fend off the opposition and expected the track to open again.