Two of these new tracks are owned and operated by longtime track operators with extensive experience outside of hosting NHRA national events, while the other two are led by comparatively green owners. In the days leading into the 2026 season,\u00a0Drag Illustrated<\/em>\u00a0spoke with these new NHRA national event track owners to get their perspectives on all the things that come with hosting an NHRA national event for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s Note: This is an excerpt from a roundtable interview that originally appeared in DI #199, the Interview Issue, in March\/April 2026. Stay tuned for interviews from Maryland International Raceway\u2019s Royce Miller, U.S. 131 Motorsports Park\u2019s Jason Peterson, and Rockingham Dragway\u2019s Dan VanHorn.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Raul Torres<\/strong>\u00a0is the first of these four owners on the schedule, as his South Georgia Motorsports Park will host the NHRA Southern Nationals May 1-3. Located in Adel, Georgia, SGMP isn\u2019t new to NHRA sanctioning and was actually slated to hold the now-scrapped Peach State NHRA Showcase of Speed event last fall. Torres and wife Jennifer purchased the facility from Ozzy and Maria Moya in 2023. SGMP is known primarily as the home of Donald Long\u2019s iconic radial races, Lights Out in February and No Mercy in October. A Division 2 double divisional at SGMP was also scheduled for early April.\u00a0<\/p>\n How long has hosting an NHRA national event been on your wish list?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Raul Torres:<\/strong>\u00a0From the very get-go. I set my goals and my expectations very high in anything I\u2019ve ever done. Just getting three quarters of the way into some of our goals would be extremely successful. But this one was like the epitome of all my goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n I think we host one of, if not the, most successful and popular small-tire radial series in the country with the Radial Outlaws and No Mercy and Lights Out. We have a huge race in the no-time world with Michael Hill\u2019s Year End Finale. So I wanted two big races, which is a no-prep race, which I\u2019m still working on, and an NHRA national event. With the NHRA national event being the biggest race in the country, that was my ultimate goal. To think we\u2019re shy of three years of ownership and achieving that goal within those three years, I would\u2019ve never believed that were the case back in March of 2023 when we were in conversations with Ozzy and Maria about buying the property and the business.<\/p>\n What are the opportunities that come with hosting one? What are the challenges?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n RT<\/strong>: The challenges are the infrastructure of the property. It\u2019s 22 years old. Their goal may or may not have been a national event when it was built. There are things that I would do differently as far as the ingress and egress of the property. The tower and the lack of buildings are our other biggest challenges. It\u2019s a bare-bones facility right now, so we\u2019ve had to make numerous improvements in order to host a national event.\u00a0<\/p>\n The opportunities are endless. Once you get a national event, that opens the doors to these national accounts and bigger companies because we would get a lot of exposure, and in turn, they would get a lot of exposure. Just being on national television for four hours in May, that in itself is a huge value to the property and the name. That is a big opportunity.<\/p>\n The government, both local and state, have started to work with us, and it\u2019s been a challenge at times to reach out to some of these elected officials and get them to work with us. We were bringing good revenue to the local economy, but now the whole state is benefiting from it. Now North Florida\u2019s benefiting from it because people are flying into Tallahassee and they\u2019re flying into Jacksonville. Now we can reach out to our neighboring state and they\u2019d be willing to work with us because we\u2019re bringing local economic benefits to them as well.<\/p>\n What have you done already to prepare and what\u2019s left to do?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n RT:<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s been five major improvement projects. Our biggest task at hand was raising the wall 6,600 feet. We had to raise it 10 to 12 inches of height for the Top Fuel and Funny Cars. That in itself was a couple months\u2019 worth of work and it\u2019s very expensive. With material costs going through the roof everywhere you turn, whether it\u2019s aluminum or concrete or metal, everything\u2019s not what it was 10-15 years ago. It\u2019s building the mold, pouring concrete day after day after day, and it\u2019s an outdoor project, so you have the weather and the cold to work with.<\/p>\n Aside from that, we had to move the scoreboards away from the race surface. Our scoreboards on both sides were up against the wall. Well, they needed moved at least 25 feet, and it\u2019s just not picking up a sign and moving it over. We\u2019ve got the entire timing system that\u2019s connected to those scoreboards. With Compulink and these computer systems, they\u2019re just microscopic wires. They\u2019re little telephone wires basically, and there\u2019s dozens of them for every last connection. We\u2019re on eggshells for four weeks while these scoreboards were disconnected, moved over 25 feet, and reconnected. Fortunately, that was one of the first tasks we took on, and we\u2019re back up and running, and we\u2019ve had real flawless events knowing that our timing system is 100 percent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our first turnoff was an opening in the wall for racers that run eighth mile. Considering these nitro guys go 300-plus mph, NHRA requires that it\u2019s a complete wall all the way down to the finish line, which is 4,400 feet of concrete wall. We had to put a metal gate where it\u2019s available for first responders to come out into an accident scene, but it\u2019s closed while we\u2019re racing and there isn\u2019t an angle where a car could impact it head-on.<\/p>\n We had to bring in over 2,000 new bleachers, which we\u2019re completing here in the next month or so.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s our final phase, and then we had to redo our top end containment. We\u2019re adding walls to the side of our sand traps and then putting tires in a top end containment on the top end after the walls at our sand traps.<\/p>\n What do you hope this event accomplishes for your track, your fans, racers, community?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n RT:\u00a0<\/strong>Aside from the economic impact that makes a huge difference to our local economy in Adel, Cecil, and Valdosta, we\u2019ve sold just in Lowndes County alone over 750 rooms. The fact that we\u2019re able to give back to our community by bringing these guests in from all over the world, but then also bring this type of excitement to our local fan base and bring this type of race to their backyard, you can\u2019t put a dollar amount on it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s extremely gratifying to hear the conversations or hear our fans calling me on a daily basis asking for tickets and their excitement about their race coming. Just the joy that we\u2019re able to bring to these families that have never been able to go to either Gainesville or Atlanta when it held the Southern Nationals, that in itself is the biggest benefit I take from all this \u2013 bringing so much joy to our local fan base and racers here at South Georgia.<\/p>\n This story was originally published on May 1, 2026. The post SGMP\u2019s Raul Torres Talks Preparation Ahead of NHRA Southern Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the NHRA celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, fans can expect to see plenty of familiar and even nostalgic elements \u2013 the return of legends, the celebration of the people and moments that made NHRA history, and even official uniforms that harken back to the \u201cglory days\u201d of the sport.\u00a0 But the NHRA Mission […]<\/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-103506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103506","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=103506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dragillustrated.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/SGMP_JRC_4292_watermarked.jpg\")
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