Drag Racing Thread -- State Capitol Raceway

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Is that the one in Erwinville? If so, I didn’t realize it was still open. I went to a couple of events there as a kid.

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Looks like they are running events every weekend, at least according to the website.

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its where we used to go buy weed in the parking lot back in the 80's. not sure if that helps

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You were a good customer. Always had your cash counted and ready, never any drama over the weights, never fired up on the premises. IWSPTYA.

(JK in case anyone important reads this.)

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Hijack: where is the closest raceway to New Orleans that they do top fuel drag racing on? Dallas?

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Belle Rose?

LINK

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Is that the one in Erwinville? If so, I didn’t realize it was still open. I went to a couple of events there as a kid.

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Yes it is. My aunt and uncle lives near the raceway and can hear the cars take off from their house

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I'm pretty sure Houston is the closest current Fuel track.

State Capitol ran an IHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car event (Mardi Gras Nationals) about 10 years ago on a trial basis with the hope of getting enough of a crowd to bring the track up to NHRA spec and get an event but I think their attendance numbers were too low to keep even the IHRA event.

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Yes the biggest problem with state capitol is parking area and needing more paved pit area to host an event the size of a national event. The track needed to be upgraded back in the late 80's when the supertracks in Ennis and Houston started being built. But is wasn't and state capitol lost out on hosting NHRA national events moving forward because of the things I mentioned above. A new state of the art timing tower and media center would obviously be needed as well.

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Yes the biggest problem with state capitol is parking area and needing more paved pit area to host an event the size of a national event. The track needed to be upgraded back in the late 80's when the supertracks in Ennis and Houston started being built. But is wasn't and state capitol lost out on hosting NHRA national events moving forward because of the things I mentioned above. A new state of the art timing tower and media center would obviously be needed as well.

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They'd basically would've had to rebuild the entire thing. The grandstands are far too close to the track to meet current NHRA standards.

Those couple of years with the IHRA events were fricking nice, though, because you could lean on the fence right at the starting line and when the light went green, you were maybe 50 feet away from 16,000 hp that wanted nothing more than to be moving away from where you were standing at 300+ mph. Or exploding. Whichever. Today, those cars are running north of 11,000 hp instead of the 8 they ran then.

The launch of two nitro class cars at close range is utterly unbelievable. The sound is so loud, you feel it deep in your chest more than hear it. If you sit downtrack at the end of the grandstands when they're passing you approaching 300 mph, you can feel the air in your lungs resonate with the sound if your mouth is open. It's hard to overplay the sound and the violence of a nitro class pass down the track.

The entire field of the Daytona 500: 40 cars at 750hp each for 30,000 hp.
One trip down the track at a nitro class event: 2 cars at 11,000+hp each for 22,000+ hp.

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They'd basically have had to have rebuild the entire thing. The granstands are far too close to the track to meet current NHRA standards.

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I went to one of the NHRA Cajun National events in maybe 1983, a fuel car had a blower explosion right in front of us, had tiny pieces of metal rain down on us, at the time I was thinking that this is way too close.

SCR was one of my first jobs. Good times, good people.

I've seen Top Fuel Dragsters run at No Problem in Belle Rose. Its not an every weekend thing though