{"id":100299,"date":"2025-04-22T17:18:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T17:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/wes-buck-keith-haney-murder-nova-riff-on-yello-belly-drag-strips-notorious-outlaw-atmosphere\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T17:18:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T17:18:20","slug":"wes-buck-keith-haney-murder-nova-riff-on-yello-belly-drag-strips-notorious-outlaw-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/wes-buck-keith-haney-murder-nova-riff-on-yello-belly-drag-strips-notorious-outlaw-atmosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Buck, Keith Haney, \u2018Murder Nova\u2019 Riff on Yello Belly Drag Strip\u2019s Notorious Outlaw Atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Buck and Keith Haney spent last Thursday<\/a> night chasing a different kind of drag\u2011racing thrill. They drove 28 miles east from Xtreme Raceway Park into a south\u2011Dallas industrial pocket, where the blacktop canyon known as Yellow Belly Drag Strip has thumped to its own outlaw rhythm since 1955. Buck\u2014with cameras rolling for The Wes Buck Show\u2014and Haney\u2014the Mid\u2011West Drag Racing Series owner\u2014had one question for Shawn \u201cMurder Nova\u201d Ellington: \u201cShawn, have you ever been there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ellington laughed. \u201cI haven\u2019t. It\u2019s one of those things that\u2019s on my bucket list,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen millions of videos from that place. And it\u2019s just somewhere that I want to go, but until I have time and have my small\u2011tire car lined out\u2026 it\u2019ll happen at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

They arrived just as Jimmy Dale and Michael Poland were launching the first Small Tire Gangstas event of 2025, a three\u2011day affair that included Thursday night\u2019s $10,000-to-win 26-inch tire shootout on Thursday night. The stands were packed wall to wall, a living testament to Yello Belly\u2019s outlaw allure. Buck later told listeners, \u201cEvery race, creed, and color was represented, and the crowd was decidedly young \u2013 way younger than you typically see at the drag races. And they were having the time of their lives \u2013 even though most of them probably couldn\u2019t tell a spark plug from a torque converter. And that\u2019s not a negative. That\u2019s a good thing. These aren\u2019t the folks you see lining the fences at a NHRA race that could probably tell you the firing order of a big-block Chevy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The on-track action was equally incredible. The lightly prepped and notoriously rough racing surface had drivers on their toes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was a race\u2011car driver. I really did until I seen them boys wheel it from one end of the racetrack to the other, from one side of the racetrack to the other,\u201d Haney said. \u201cYou get yourself a different perspective on all this stuff when you see those guys trying to rein in a couple thousand horsepower after hitting the ground with no traction. Zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

By midnight, Buck and Haney had helped clean up a massive oil down on the track, a souvenir of the evening\u2019s pulse. \u201cBelieve it or not, both of us were out on the track trying to help Chris Raska, Jimmy Dale, Poland and the whole team at Yello Belly try to clean up what was one helluva mess,\u201d Buck admitted. \u201cThey did all the hard work, we just slung some oil dry, helped broom and blow it all off. Honestly, I thought they might have to pull the plug on the deal. It was bad. I was sick to my stomach. Jimmy and I walked up and down the track, it was as good as it could be all things considered. He looked at me and said, \u2018we\u2019re gonna run it\u2019 and within about 20 minutes cars were running, and flying down that thing. I was impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safety concerns are inevitable at an outlaw venue and it\u2019s the subject of much debate in drag racing, but, as Buck put it on the show, \u201cHumans gonna human, boys\u2014they\u2019ve been running since 1955 and Facebook comments won\u2019t change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, it\u2019s what started all of this stuff. And the last thing we need to do as a sport is alienate those people, right, or make them feel bad. I was looking at it through the lens of folks making questionable decisions\u2014they don\u2019t know any better. They\u2019ve never been to a NHRA national event, never seen a pro\u2011level drag race, they might not even know there\u2019s such a thing as a 20\u2011layer fire suit. And for me, I\u2019m glad they\u2019re not out racing in some random industrial area\u2014I was glad they had an EMS on site. But what really hit me was the crowd \u2013 all these teenage kids, girls, young women\u2014smiling, laughing, having the time of their lives, not knowing what a 60\u2011foot time even is or what a good reaction might be. They were just there to have fun and be with their friends. As we finally rolled out at 1:45 a.m. we had to swing by The Taco Lady \u2013 very worth it, by the way \u2013 and I realized that I really didn\u2019t want to leave. I haven\u2019t felt like that at a dragstrip too many times.\u201d<\/p>\n

That raw enthusiasm, the trio agreed, is what fuels drag racing\u2019s future. \u201cSome of the bigger places need to take a look at it and see they\u2019re obviously doing something right because the place is packed,\u201d Ellington said. \u201cEvery time they go to the track, they\u2019re putting more and more of their hard\u2011earned money into this race car\u2026 somebody in the stands is watching that guy with the biggest shitbox out there going, \u2018Man, I want to do that someday.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was nearly 2 a.m. before Ellington\u2019s phone buzzed. \u201cDad, who\u2019s going to win this race?\u201d his son texted. \u201cHe knows how close I follow this stuff. I follow a lot of it \u2013 all the big-tire stuff \u2013 but I watch all these small-tire guys closely. He knows he can hit me up and I\u2019m going to have a pick for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time they piled into their trucks, Buck was already planning his next trip. \u201cHow quick can I get back to Yello Belly? That\u2019s what I\u2019m asking myself as I\u2019m pulling out. It\u2019s electric.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUndoubtedly, there\u2019s some wild shit that goes on at tracks like that, and I can\u2019t get on board with all of it,\u201d he admits, but he\u2019s \u201cnot willing to turn a blind eye to this entire world of people that are passionate about drag racing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather than \u201cripping them to shreds in the comments,\u201d Buck wants to \u201cget my arms around these people and guide them forward, perhaps a little more safely,\u201d without letting a \u201clegendary spot like Yello Belly\u201d lose its luster. \u201cThis sport was built on the backs of rebels, outlaws, and bad asses. I\u2019m not willing to abandon that. The sport can evolve, and it should, but we can\u2019t leave these people behind. They\u2019re having more fun than all of us. There\u2019s something to learn from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was originally published on April 22, 2025. \"Drag<\/p>\n

The post Wes Buck, Keith Haney, \u2018Murder Nova\u2019 Riff on Yello Belly Drag Strip\u2019s Notorious Outlaw Atmosphere<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wes Buck and Keith Haney spent last Thursday night chasing a different kind of drag\u2011racing thrill. They drove 28 miles east from Xtreme Raceway Park into a south\u2011Dallas industrial pocket, where the blacktop canyon known as Yellow Belly Drag Strip has thumped to its own outlaw rhythm since 1955. Buck\u2014with cameras rolling for The Wes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}