Thompson Drag Raceway/Thompson Raceway Park

History

The track reportedly opened in 1958, managed by George R. Sterner of Akron, an NHRA area adviser. Its website wrongly calls it Ohio’s first drag strip, when about half a dozen established strips came before it. On October 18, 1959, Art Malone drove Don Garlits’ A/FD to a 1,000-foot world record of 7.59 at 160.70 mph. The 1960 season opened July 24, and the September 1961 Car Craft listed it as an NHRA track racing every Sunday. Usually called Thompson Drag Raceway from the 1960s through the 1990s, it was 60 feet wide and 4,000 feet long. In 1963 it had 252 classes, more than any strip in the country. In 1964 it ran under the AHRA and the International Drag Racing Association. On May 16, 1965, Doug Rose drove Walt Arfons’s Green Monster to 214.32 mph in 7.75 seconds.

Night racing started in 1968. Match races and exhibition cars were a staple through the 1970s, with E. J. Potter (the Michigan Madman), Wild Willy Borsch, Dickie Harrell, Gene Snow, Shirley Muldowney, Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, Ronnie Sox and Roger Lindamood among them. A new concrete starting line and return road went in in 1978. The Pro Gas Circuit was big in the late 1970s, possibly the origin of the track’s Home of the Gassers tag. A weak economy in the 1970s led to a stretch of neglect. Bill and Bonnie Clemson bought the track in 1991 and made major upgrades over fourteen years. It has been sanctioned by the AHRA in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s and by the NHRA in 1979-80 and 2004. The Kuhnle Brothers bought it in December 2021, made many improvements, and renamed it Kuhnle Motorsports Park under IHRA sanction, then joined the NHRA Member Track Network in December 2025. It’s home to the Nostalgia Gasser Nationals and runs semi-truck drags on a separate track next door.