What is the IHRA’s Vision After Track Acquisition Spree?
Scott Woodruff doesn’t have a title at the nascent International Hot Rod Association but if you have to call him something, ‘woody’ probably wouldn’t balk at ‘director of fun’ as that is generally what Darryl Cuttell has asked him to do.
For over two decades, he was the brand and media manager at JEGS Performance but he preferred the ‘make stuff happen guy’ title.
Still, Cuttell has made quite the splash in the North American Motorsports scene over the past 13 months in acquiring the IHRA brand and then expanding it to nearly every facet of the industry with a dizzying number of acquisitions.
He has purchased nearly a dozen drag strips and began promoting an expanded national tour with larger payouts and increased fanfare. IHRA has acquired a powerboat racing series and launched a Late Model tour set to begin in April.
Read more: Everything you need to know about IHRA Stock Cars
As part of the latter, IHRA leased dormant Pulaski County Motorsports Park in Virgina and purchased Memphis International Speedway in Tennessee. Most recently, it acquired Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina, which brings it into NASCAR’s orbit as they will host a second-year Easter weekend event for the O’Reilly auto Parts and Craftsman Truck Series.
In short, Woodruff says his job is ‘to make racing fun again’ across all the divisions and properties Cuttell has started to accumulate like Infinity Stones.
“For a lot of endeavors like this, funding is the big issue,” Woodruff told Motorsport.com on Thursday. “funding is not our issue. It’s got to be the right people in the right place. Right now, we’re in the middle of a big two-day planning session and the questions we get to ask ourselves is ‘what would we wont as fans,’ or ‘what would we want as competitors,’ or as partners.”
Funding, incidentally, is not an issue because Cuttell is the CEO and president of Darana Hybrid — the electro-mechanical company most famous for doing contract work with xAI, spacex and Tesla.
His Stock Car Series race director, Tim Horton, said the acquisition spree is about Cuttell’s personal legacy.
“He’s purchased seven or eight drag strips now, repurposed them, and made deep investments into the infrastructure of the sport
“He just walked out of the door and seemed pretty happy,” Woodruff said.
For his part, over text, Sargent agreed with the positive sentiment.
Memphis International Speedway has a NASCAR national touring history as well. It hosted what is now the O’Reilly Series from 1999 to 2009 and the Truck Series from 1998 to 2009.
Woodruff conceded that NASCAR’s recent post-trial restructuring and the holidays has delayed thier initial conversations but he’s looking forward to getting to work with them in a variety of capacities.
“We probably haven’t been high up on their priority list this past month,” Woodruff said. “But I do know that we’ve got a group that is meeting with them in the next week or two.
How has IHRA decided what to acquire out of all the options out there?
“Each situation is different and has different pluses and minuses,” Woodruff said. “We look at it as a group and then we decide ‘okay, on a scale of 1-10, how much do we want do this? Is this facility nice or is it necessary? That’s another conversation too. We’re trying to be good stewards of the sport and some of these tracks, we could have walked away and not purchased them, but a lot of them are crown jewels that just need a little bit of love.”
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