{"id":104567,"date":"2026-08-16T20:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/free-ice-ferris-wheels-and-a-federal-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T20:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T20:44:07","slug":"free-ice-ferris-wheels-and-a-federal-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/free-ice-ferris-wheels-and-a-federal-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Ice, Ferris Wheels, and a Federal Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A<\/span>nybody who worked the 2025 PRI Show in Indianapolis remembers the jackets.<\/p>\n

The International Hot Rod Association had a reported 100-plus people on site, an extraordinary number for a sanctioning body of any size, and a great many of them were wearing the same thing: a black softshell with the IHRA globe on the chest and, on the left sleeve in white, the xAI logo. It got noticed. It got photographed. It got posted. And it produced a question that circulated through the halls of the Indiana Convention Center and across drag racing social media for weeks afterward.<\/p>\n

Was xAI sponsoring the IHRA?<\/p>\n

On August 4, that question got an answer nobody was expecting. x.AI LLC, CTC Property LLC and MZX Tech LLC filed a 40-page complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee naming Darana Hybrid, Inc., Cuttell Motorsports, LLC doing business as the International Hot Rod Association, and Darryl Cuttell personally as defendants. Case No. 2:26-cv-02994. Ten counts. One of them, Count Three, is a federal trademark claim brought against IHRA and against Cuttell as an individual over the use of that logo.<\/p>\n

The answer, according to the plaintiffs, is no. They say they never authorized any of it, in writing or otherwise.<\/p>\n

That is the smallest allegation in the document.<\/p>\n

Before any of it, there was a version of this that a lot of people in drag racing wanted very badly to believe in.<\/p>\n

Cuttell bought the IHRA from Larry Jeffers in December of 2024, days after his company, Darana Hybrid, had been announced at the PRI Show as the sanctioning body\u2019s title sponsor. He was the tenth owner in the organization\u2019s history, an ownership carousel that is its own comment on how hard the thing is to run.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Darryl Cuttell, with Kenny Nowling, announcing the IHRA purchase in December 2024. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What followed was the most aggressive expansion this sport has seen from anyone. Racetracks, more than a dozen of them, bought in barely a year. The Outlaw Nitro Series. Powerboats. Stock cars at Rockingham. Tractor pulls, snowmobiles, rodeo and bull riding. Frank Hawley\u2019s Drag Racing School. The World Drag Racing Alliance and its member track network, which pushed IHRA\u2019s own claimed count past 110 sanctioned facilities across five countries. Purses at levels the sport had never posted. Free ice in the pits, catered food, live bands, a ferris wheel, forty dollars to bring a family through the gate on a Friday.<\/p>\n

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Free ice, catered food, live bands, a ferris wheel. For a while, the IHRA spared no expense. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And a helicopter. At the series\u2019 first event under the new ownership in Columbus, with rain threatening the schedule, Cuttell put his helicopter low over the racing surface and used the rotor wash to help dry the track. It went everywhere on social media. For a lot of people that was the whole pitch in one image: here is a guy who will do absolutely anything to get the cars down the track.<\/p>\n

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Cuttell put his helicopter low over the racing surface at Columbus to help dry the track, the image a lot of people took as the whole pitch. (Photo: IHRA\/TikTok)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That is the version that ended this summer. What the lawsuit describes is how it was allegedly paid for.<\/p>\n

For two weeks this sport has heard one account, and it came from Cuttell. He gave it to the Daily Memphian on July 31 and to Action News 5 on August 4. Darana Hybrid, his Hamilton, Ohio electrical and mechanical contracting company, performed roughly $1.5 billion in work building data centers for Elon Musk\u2019s operation in Memphis and in Southaven, Mississippi. The invoices got paid. Then in April, after xAI and SpaceX merged, the payments stopped. He put the outstanding figure north of $600 million. He filed mechanics\u2019 liens. He suspended the Millington racetrack redevelopment. He said he may have to sell IHRA assets to survive.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Darryl Cuttell with Speed Sport\u2019s Ralph Sheheen at the 2025 PRI Show. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was running smoothly until April when the new regime stepped in and just ruined it all,\u201d Cuttell told Action News 5. \u201cI\u2019ve never been treated so unfair for doing such a good job. I overextended myself, gave him everything he wanted, and now I\u2019m getting trashed. I gotta be careful. I don\u2019t know if I can go fight them. I mean, it\u2019s pretty hard to fight the richest man in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complaint filed four days earlier tells a story that is not merely different. It is inverted.<\/p>\n

Its central claim concerns a single clause in the Master Services Agreement the parties signed in 2024. That clause let Darana hire subcontractors, but only with written consent, and it capped what Darana could add on top of what those subcontractors charged. The cap was ten percent.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs allege Darana subcontracted at least three quarters of the labor it billed while employing only 50 to 70 people directly, never disclosed which workers were subcontractors, and billed every hour at the same rate regardless of who did the work. They say they got an unintended look at the real numbers when Darana turned over payroll data so the company could claim tax credits, and that the data showed Darana paying some subcontractors as little as $21.60 an hour while billing as much as $245 for the same labor. The largest labor subcontractor, the complaint says, averaged about $61 an hour.<\/p>\n

The document describes markups reaching 880 percent and estimates the resulting overcharge at $500 to $800 million. It further alleges Darana billed for workers logging more than 24 hours in a single day. When the company invoked its audit rights in May and asked for the underlying subcontractor invoices, the complaint says, Darana refused, first citing confidentiality obligations to third parties and later arguing it could not produce labor data because the labor charges were in dispute. The company terminated Darana for cause on June 23.<\/p>\n

That is a construction dispute, and by itself it would be somebody else\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

What makes it ours is the allegation that a meaningful amount of that money came to drag racing.<\/p>\n

The complaint states in its opening pages that while Darana was overcharging its client, it was also diverting the client\u2019s funds into Cuttell\u2019s side projects, and it identifies hot rod racing as the most egregious of them. It alleges Darana billed the data center client for out-of-scope work on hot rod projects, including the construction of a local raceway that had nothing to do with the data centers.<\/p>\n

It then names addresses. Roughly $88,000 of safety equipment, vests and goggles, purchased from the supplier White Cap and shipped to 8415 Firebird Drive in Hamilton, Ohio, which the complaint identifies as IHRA\u2019s corporate headquarters, and charged back to the data center client. More than a dozen additional invoices tied to IHRA locations, among them 5500 Victory Lane.<\/p>\n

That is Memphis International Raceway in Millington, Tennessee, the facility IHRA acquired in December and announced this spring it would redevelop as Darana Motorsports Park. It sits about half an hour up the road from the Colossus site. When the complaint refers to a local raceway, that is the raceway it means.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"\"\"<\/div>
The IHRA broke ground on a redevelopment of the Memphis facility as Darana Motorsports Park. The project is now on indefinite hold. (Photos: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And the plaintiffs allege those invoices were submitted under purchase orders for the data center projects, so they would read as legitimate construction expenses.<\/p>\n

The trademark count returns to Indianapolis. The complaint alleges IHRA personnel publicly wore jackets bearing both marks at an industry event in December 2025 and at IHRA shows through at least March of 2026. The plaintiffs plead a registered mark for X.AI and a pending application filed specifically for t-shirts, hats and related merchandise. They are seeking triple damages, which requires proving the infringement was willful, and they argue Cuttell is personally liable because he owns IHRA outright and personally made the branding decision.<\/p>\n

There is one more provision worth understanding, because it reframes the entire timeline.<\/p>\n

In April 2025 the parties signed an amendment that gave Cuttell an equity incentive of restricted stock units valued at $28.5 million, tied to hitting GPU commissioning milestones. The same amendment added an exclusivity clause requiring Darana and its affiliates to work exclusively on the client\u2019s data center projects from April 2025 through April 2027. The incentive vested, in the contract\u2019s words, \u201cif and only if\u201d Darana stayed in strict compliance with that exclusivity provision and kept providing services through the end of the period. Miss either condition and the award is \u201cautomatically forfeited without any further action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Set that against a calendar. The track buying, the Outlaw Nitro Series, the powerboats, the Triple Crown, the hundred people in Indianapolis. All of it happened inside a window in which, per this contract, Cuttell had agreed to work on nothing but data centers.<\/p>\n

The final section of the complaint concerns the weeks after termination. It alleges Darana wrote to the Shelby County code office the following day demanding that all of its permits be voided and not transferred or reissued to anyone, costing the client more than $8 million to replace on an expedited basis. And it alleges that on July 2 the client wired Darana $44,394,472.54 under a written agreement that the funds would be routed to specifically named suppliers still delivering wire to active job sites. The complaint reproduces the invoice list. It says Darana\u2019s counsel confirmed twice that the remittance instructions would be followed, and that on July 17 Darana acknowledged they had not been, said the money could not be traced, and indicated portions of it had gone to roughly 40 hotels, equipment rentals and staffing agencies.<\/p>\n

These are allegations, all of them, and Darana is not sitting still. It got to a courthouse first. On August 3, a day before x.AI filed in Memphis, Darana sued two x.AI entities, CTC Property and MZX Tech, in the Chancery Court of Shelby County, Tennessee. Its verified complaint alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment and a violation of the state\u2019s Prompt Payment Act, and moves to enforce mechanic\u2019s liens of $18.6 million against the Colossus site and $118.2 million against a second Memphis data center, roughly $137 million in Tennessee alone. It asks the court to force a sale of x.AI\u2019s interest in those properties to satisfy the debt. Cuttell has put the full figure, across Tennessee and Mississippi, at more than half a billion dollars. On August 11, x.AI removed that case to the same federal court where its own suit sits, so there are now two federal lawsuits, filed a day apart, telling opposite stories about the same money and separated by something close to a billion dollars. No criminal charges have been filed against anyone. This is a civil dispute, and a federal judge in Memphis will take a long time to sort it out.<\/p>\n

The people it landed on do not have that kind of time.<\/p>\n

The IHRA has not staged a drag race since June 20.<\/p>\n

That last one was the Triple Crown opener at Darana Raceway in Hebron, Ohio, and by every account, including from people who have since lost money on it, it was a good race. Five drivers won their classes. Tripp Tatum in Top Fuel, running a 3.764 at 328.47 mph. Paul Lee in Funny Car. Jason Harris in Pro Mod, out of a 31-car field. John DeFlorian Jr. in Mountain Motor Pro Stock. Taylor Dietsch in IHRA Factory Pro Stock, beating his own father in the final.<\/p>\n

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The five class winners at Hebron, each eligible for the Triple Crown\u2019s $1 million sweep bonus. (Photo: Robert Richards)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those five were the class winners eligible for the Triple Crown\u2019s $1 million sweep bonus, awarded to anyone who could take all three races. They were not the only ones owed money. The posted purse paid down to first-round losers in every class, which means every racer who qualified at Hebron should have gone home with something, and the Pro Mod field alone was 31 cars deep.<\/p>\n

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Two Pro Mods stage under the ferris wheel at Darana Raceway in Hebron. (Photo: Robert Richards)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other two Triple Crown races were both scheduled for Maple Grove Raceway on the same four-day weekend, September 10-13. The IHRA called it Triple Crown x2: qualifying Thursday and eliminations Friday for one event, qualifying Saturday and eliminations Sunday for the other. The finale had originally been set for the Memphis facility in Millington and was moved in May.<\/p>\n

Neither of those races happened, and as far as Drag Illustrated has been able to determine, nobody has been paid for the one that did.<\/p>\n

Jason Harris is owed $100,000 for winning Pro Mod that weekend. It was the first step towards a potential million-dollar payday for one of drag racing\u2019s true rising superstars. When the next two races in the IHRA Triple Crown were rescheduled to happen essentially as a double-header at Maple Grove Raceway in September, Harris felt he had a legitimate shot at sweeping the series.<\/p>\n

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Jason Harris won $100,000 in Pro Mod at the Triple Crown opener. He says he has not been paid. (Photo: Robert Richards)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost like somebody gave you a lottery ticket for a million dollars,\u201d says Harris. \u201cYou scratched the first number off and it was a seven. You got halfway done with the second number and it could look like a seven, and then somebody tore the damn ticket out of your hand and threw it in the trash.\u201d<\/p>\n

He considers himself owed another $100,000 for a championship he was leading by six rounds with ten rounds of racing left when the season was canceled, a margin he describes as insurmountable.<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019d be almost like winning the Super Bowl but never getting the ring.Jason Harris<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the 57 days since, not one person from the IHRA has contacted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot Larry Morgan. Nobody, not nobody,\u201d Harris tells Drag Illustrated. \u201cNobody has called Jason Harris directly and said, \u2018Hey man, we\u2019re working on this, give us some time.\u2019 The only communication I\u2019ve got is what\u2019s been put on Facebook. There\u2019s been no direct communication as far as anybody from upper-level management calling me directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris is one of the most accomplished Pro Mod racers in the country and he had gone all-in on the IHRA. By midsummer he had made roughly 200 runs on the season, an enormous number for an operation his size, and he had chased the IHRA money hard enough that other racers noticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI caught some grief from other competitors about what they saw as me turning my back on the PDRA,\u201d Harris says. \u201cI felt like they thought that I jumped ship, which wasn\u2019t at all our intention. I was really just doing it for the money aspect of it, because it costs so much to go that the return on going has to be worth it and the IHRA payouts were just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the warning signs were in the payment timing, which slipped a little further each time. Before the Triple Crown he told the IHRA he would not run Pro Mod Mania, or the Triple Crown after it, unless the money from the previous race came through first. It landed about a week before he left.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they knew that nobody was gonna show for a Triple Crown if they didn\u2019t get paid,\u201d says Harris.<\/p>\n

He went. And by his own account it was one of the best events he had been to in years.<\/p>\n

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An IHRA racer dinner. For a while, the money and the hospitality were real. (Photo: Robert Richards)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no fault to anybody that worked at IHRA whatsoever. I think they did their job. They made it a class act,\u201d Harris says. \u201cBut you could just tell that maybe something was awry, because everybody was really nice and really forthcoming about everything. I think they thought that this was gonna be the turning point.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a small-budget operation, he says, it was the most money he had ever won in a single race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was depressing to the point where I thought about quitting,\u201d admits Harris. \u201cI had counted on this money to go to the next race. I had motor rebuilds I paid for, and things that I took for granted because I was making money and I was racing hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The runs cost him well past the entry fee. More freshen-ups. More travel. Wear on the motorhome. Time away from a business and a family.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did our due diligence. We showed up. We paid the man $500 to run,\u201d Harris says. \u201cAnd I won a prize and I\u2019ve not got it. It\u2019d be almost like winning the Super Bowl but never getting the ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris has thought about suing and decided against it. The judgment, he figures, would cost more to chase than it would ever be worth against a man whose assets sit across a stack of LLCs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re just gonna be chasing a ghost,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The IHRA published the purse breakdown in advance, and the arithmetic was available to anyone who cared to do it.<\/p>\n

\n

The math never worked<\/h4>\n
$1.545M<\/b>posted purse, one race<\/i><\/span>$5.6M+<\/b>three races plus the sweep<\/i><\/span>20,000<\/b>seats at Maple Grove<\/i><\/span>~115,000<\/b>paid admissions needed<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

A single Triple Crown race carried roughly $1,545,000 in posted purse across the eight professional classes on the sheet. That is $150,000 to win in both Top Fuel and Funny Car, more than double what the NHRA pays, plus $100,000 in Pro Mod, $60,000 in Outlaw Pro Mod, $50,000 in Mountain Motor Pro Stock, and money down to first-round losers in every class. At $40 a ticket, covering that requires roughly 38,000 paying adults through the gate for the weekend.<\/p>\n

Then consider what September was supposed to be. Two full Triple Crown events at Maple Grove across four days, back to back, at one facility. Call it $3 million in professional payout for the weekend, or about 77,000 paid adults.<\/p>\n

Maple Grove seats 20,000.<\/p>\n

To cover the professional purse at that one event, the IHRA would have needed to fill the place close to four times over. Across the full three-race series it needed something in the neighborhood of 115,000 paid admissions. That is before the sportsman purse, the rodeo, the concerts, staff, sanctioning, insurance, safety crews, television production, or the cost of putting the show on at all.<\/p>\n

It is also before the sweep bonus. A driver who won all three races collected $1 million, and it was offered in five classes: Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Mod, Mountain Motor Pro Stock and IHRA Factory Pro Stock. Had every one of them run the table, that was another $5 million.<\/p>\n

None of this was hidden. It was on the purse sheet and on the ticket page, published months in advance, and everybody in the sport knew it, or should have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"
The Triple Crown trophy. Sweeping all three races was worth $1 million. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the fans that caused this problem,\u201d says Harris. \u201cHe could have packed every damn race there was at $40, and it wasn\u2019t going to make up for the fact that he was losing millions at these races.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris has been here before, which is the one piece of genuine hope in this story. The ADRL owed him money in 2013 and folded. Nearly a decade later, he says, Kenny Nowling made it right and he got his check.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight years later, hey, that\u2019s $8,000 he paid me,\u201d Harris says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s saying something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The racers are the most visible group. They are not the only ones.<\/p>\n

\n

A casualty of billionaires fighting.Steve Grein, Windy City TV Group<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Steve Grein owns Windy City TV Group, the Chicago-based production company that built and ran the IHRA broadcast. In an interview with Drag Illustrated, he laid out what the collapse did to a business he has run for 27 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were promised 45-plus events this year with crews of 15 to 25 people per event,\u201d Grein says. \u201cThat equated to one to three events a weekend. Starting in January we asked people to lock up weekends, hold dates and dedicate their year to the IHRA. When it ended abruptly, people were left looking at work they turned down for the IHRA and not getting paid. Work they can\u2019t get back this year. Some worked almost a month without getting paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grein says the IHRA is close to a million dollars in arrears with his company alone, having not paid for events beginning the first weekend in June while promising to cover everything through two July events. And the debt did not stop at the production company.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only to the production company, but to CBS Sports and Speed Sport as well,\u201d says Grein. \u201cCBS stopped airing any shows the moment the IHRA got behind and didn\u2019t pay for the airtime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yearly agreements with equipment rental houses, television trucks and more than 100 crew members were halted without warning. Grein says his company has been trying to negotiate an equipment trade with the IHRA to recoup something, anything, so the people who worked can be paid. He has already had to let employees go. He has been threatened with lawsuits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a horrible balance of trying to move forward, replace the lost work while we dig out of being a casualty of billionaires fighting,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

What compounded the damage, in his telling, was the reassurance. Windy City was told the problem was temporary and money would arrive no later than the end of July. Individual series, he says, asked and then begged the company to keep streaming their events while it got sorted out, because they believed the same thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems as though it was bigger and worse than anyone really knew,\u201d Grein says. \u201cHad everything just stopped in early June and events didn\u2019t stack up, it would only be half as bad as it is today. Now we are stuck with loss of work and no pay for work that we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The residue is granular and unglamorous. More than $40,000 in flight credits the company cannot use or refund, because travel had been booked 45 to 60 days out. A hotel in Redding that held Windy City to its contract for $15,000. Weeks of damage control.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has caused many people that dedicated their summer to the IHRA to miss mortgage payments, rent, auto payments and more,\u201d says Grein. \u201cI only know because I get daily texts, calls and email to that effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Separately, a member of the broadcast crew who asked not to be identified contacted Drag Illustrated in July describing the same situation from the crew\u2019s side, and wrote that some members were struggling to make rent. \u201cWe simply want to be paid for the work we completed,\u201d the crew member wrote.<\/p>\n

The same pattern repeats at the track level, where the workforce is largely contract labor. Safety crews, EMTs and fire personnel, timing and scoring, tech officials, gate and concessions staff, announcers, cleanup crews. These are people who work a race weekend at a time, invoice for it, and operate on margins that do not absorb a missed payment.<\/p>\n

There is now a public Facebook group, with more than 800 members, called Darryl Cuttell \/ IHRA Owes Me Money. Its cover image reads: The race is powered by people. Pay workers. Keep promises.<\/p>\n

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The public group has more than 800 members. Its cover: \u201cThe race is powered by people. Pay workers. Keep promises.\u201d (Screenshot: Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a post there on July 24, a member identifying himself as the owner of an ambulance company that has been covering an IHRA-owned track wrote that he has never received a payment from the organization and cannot get a reply from its accounts payable department. He put the figure at close to $15,000. Drag Illustrated could not independently verify the post or the writer\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to bail on the track because the local folks are great as are the racers,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut I can\u2019t keep carrying all the overhead with no light at the end of the tunnel.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is the safety coverage at a drag strip. Without an ambulance on site, a track does not open.<\/p>\n

At least one travel agency serving the drag racing industry is out close to $30,000 after having to cancel bulk hotel room blocks reserved for IHRA events that never happened.<\/p>\n

There are racers who built entire programs around the IHRA\u2019s return, who bought equipment and committed a season to a schedule that no longer exists, and who are now trying to change direction in August. Mountain Motor Pro Stock, a class the IHRA had made a centerpiece, is in a particularly hard spot, with a shrinking number of places to run.<\/p>\n

And then there are the people who took the jobs.<\/p>\n

Over the past 20 months a significant number of drag racing professionals left established companies and stable careers for the IHRA, an organization hiring aggressively and paying well. Very few of them lasted. By any reasonable count the sanctioning body went through five or six presidents in that span.<\/p>\n

Kenny Nowling, the former American Drag Racing League chief, was president at the time of the sale and was gone within weeks. Rich Schaefer, a longtime NHRA division director, replaced him in January of 2025 and lasted about three months.<\/p>\n

Alan Reinhart, who spent three decades announcing for the NHRA, was there at the start, and has since described the experience in detail on his own podcast. He was, he notes, never president, a title he says people keep assigning him. He was vice president of racing operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told, \u2018You are in charge of everything at the racetrack,’\u201d Reinhart says. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re in charge of what classes we run, what rules package we\u2019re going to run, what schedules we\u2019re going to run, what we\u2019re going to do.\u2019 Okay, fine. And I would come up with, okay, this is the plan. And I would present it and be told, yep, that\u2019s it, let\u2019s go. And then a week later, somebody would call me and go, yeah, no, we hate that. We\u2019re going to do something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had a specific plan for the relaunch, and it was the opposite of what happened. A soft opening rather than a spectacle: Pro Mod and Mountain Motor Pro Stock, a big doorslammer show built on what he calls the IHRA\u2019s historical bread and butter, plus a best-two-of-three match race between Clay Millican and Tony Schumacher. He says he had already reached out to both drivers and both had agreed to discuss.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went and presented that to the IHRA guys, including Darryl face to face, I said this is what I want to do for the first race,\u201d says Reinhart. \u201cYep, absolutely do it. Make it happen. And then three days later was told, nope, absolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cuttell\u2019s personal slogan: Make It Happen. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The breaking point came when Schaefer was let go.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a meeting and I said, just tell me who the boss is,\u201d Reinhart says. \u201cTell me who\u2019s in charge. Tell me what we\u2019re going to do here. And nobody had an answer to that question. And I said, you know what, I\u2019m out.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was brought back the following winter as a contract announcer, no title and no responsibilities, and worked four races. Three days after being told everything was fine, he says, he received an email terminating him.<\/p>\n

Scott \u201cWoody\u201d Woodruff, the chief operating officer and the closest thing the organization had to a public face, was terminated by text message. Drag Illustrated has reviewed the exchange, provided by Woodruff, who also made it public himself. Cuttell\u2019s message reads, in its entirety, \u201cFired.\u201d Woodruff\u2019s reply reads, \u201cThank you.\u201d He says he was blocked on Cuttell\u2019s phone three or four separate times before that, generally after disagreeing with him.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Scott Woodruff at the PRI Show, and the text that ended his tenure. Cuttell\u2019s message read \u201cFired.\u201d Woodruff\u2019s reply: \u201cThank you.\u201d (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook; screenshot provided by Scott Woodruff)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Speaking on Reinhart\u2019s podcast, Woodruff describes an operation that expanded past the point of function.<\/p>\n

\n

Honestly, nobody\u2019s going to get paid.Scott \u201cWoody\u201d Woodruff, former IHRA COO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI think everything was working very well when we ended the season at GALOT,\u201d he says. \u201cBut when we started adding a lot of the other disciplines, it was like drinking out of a fire hose rather than a power sprayer. It was already enough at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

He describes a decision-making process in which the last person to reach Cuttell tended to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to filter out people\u2019s ideas, and Darryl had people coming at him all the time with a better idea, a better this, a better that,\u201d says Woodruff. \u201cHe talked to five more people after that, and whoever the last person was that he talked to, that was the genius.\u201d<\/p>\n

His assessment of what it cost is bleak. \u201cIt failed because nobody was able to do their job,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I feel bad for everybody that\u2019s not going to get paid, because honestly, nobody\u2019s going to get paid. That\u2019s my opinion. And that sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leah Martin was introduced at the 2025 PRI Show as IHRA president, the first woman to lead a major motorsports sanctioning body. She was let go in May while on site running the IHRA\u2019s Thunder on the Beach offshore powerboat event in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Drag Illustrated asked her for a statement. She provided one.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Leah Martin, introduced as IHRA president at the 2025 PRI Show, with Top Fuel Motorcycle racer Larry McBride. (Photo: IHRA\/Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe conversation and circumstances surrounding it were unexpected, especially after meeting personally with Darryl just a couple of hours earlier with no indication that a change was coming,\u201d Martin wrote. \u201cI was later informed that a meeting had taken place the night before at a hotel room regarding the decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remain incredibly proud of everything we worked to build,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI poured my heart, time, energy, and countless hours into this sport and this organization because I truly believed in the vision and the future of racing. Like many in this industry, those commitments often came at the expense of personal and family time, but I believed the mission was worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Below the executive level, the same thing happened with less notice. Division directors are gone. Emily Mawhinney, the general manager brought in to reopen Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka, said she learned of her termination by email. Most, by their own accounts, got no explanation and no plan.<\/p>\n

The dates are worth holding onto. Cuttell has said the trouble began in April of 2026, when the data center payments stopped. The executive turnover began in the spring of 2025, roughly a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Then there is the real estate.<\/p>\n

A property schedule produced by IHRA and reviewed by Drag Illustrated lists 14 racing facilities held by Darana Motorsports Holdings, LLC, twelve owned outright and two held under lease with an option to purchase. The list runs from Hebron, Ohio to Commerce, Georgia to Topeka, Kansas: National Trail, GALOT, Milan, Kil-Kare, Piedmont, Dragway 42, Heartland, Memphis International, Maple Grove, Rockingham, Virginia Motorsports Park, Atlanta Dragway, Empire Dragway and Pulaski County Motorsports Park.<\/p>\n

Read the descriptions on that schedule and something jumps out. National Trail Raceway is listed as Darana Raceway. GALOT Motorsports Park is Darana Motorsports Park. Milan Dragway is Darana Dragway. Kil-Kare Raceway is Darana Raceway. Dragway 42 is Darana Dragway. Heartland Motorsports Park is Darana Heartland Motorsports Park.<\/p>\n

Six facilities carrying, in some cases, more than half a century of name recognition in this sport, rebranded after a Hamilton, Ohio electrical contractor. That contractor is the defendant in a federal lawsuit alleging that the money behind the expansion was never its own.<\/p>\n

Beyond the owned facilities are the member tracks, the dozens of independent operations that run IHRA rules and whose racers chase IHRA points. They are not party to any of this and they have the most people in them.<\/p>\n

Heartland Motorsports Park, bought in late December with public promises of a full restoration, is in limbo. The Millington project is on indefinite hold, and the Millington Chamber of Commerce says it still has not received official word from IHRA about a timeline.<\/p>\n

Woodruff, who sat in on the Atlanta Dragway community meetings, thinks the damage there runs deeper than any balance sheet. He describes a council meeting attended by more than 400 people who wanted to tell him what the track had meant to them, who had been in the Cub Scouts there, who had parked cars there.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow these people that were really passionate about something that they lost, that they were going to get back again, a community,\u201d Woodruff says. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s going the other way. You can\u2019t go back to the community and say, hey, we got a new idea here. That happened once. It happened again. Hey, this is the new IHRA, Darryl Cuttell version. There isn\u2019t going to be a third time. And I hate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on July 23, Richard Freeman was told the sanctioning body had been sold to a buyer whose identity has still not been made public.<\/p>\n

In the interest of transparency, Drag Illustrated discloses, as it did in its July 24 report on Richard Freeman\u2019s attempt to purchase the IHRA, that DI founder Wes Buck was present in Hamilton, Ohio on July 14 when Freeman inspected the organization\u2019s assets. No transaction resulted. The property schedule referenced above was obtained by DI in the course of those discussions. DI has no financial interest in the IHRA, Cuttell Motorsports or Darana Hybrid, and no business relationship with any party to this litigation.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is one piece of good news, and it arrived Monday.<\/p>\n

Bill Bader Jr. announced that Summit Racing Equipment, BluePrint Engines, PJH TrackBite, Fuel Factory and a fifth partner to be named have committed to fully underwrite a $150,000 purse for a Sportsman World Finals at Summit Motorsports Park on October 22-24, should the IHRA prove unable to stage one. If IHRA runs its own event, Bader\u2019s simply goes away.<\/p>\n

\u201cSportsman racing is the backbone of this entire sport,\u201d Bader said. \u201cWhen times get tough, real partners step up to support the racers who keep the staging lanes full.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sportsman racers will have a World Finals to run for after all, underwritten by Summit Racing Equipment and partners. (Photo: Summit Motorsports Park)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A bracket racer in Ohio who spent an entire season earning a spot in a championship event will get to race for one, because a handful of companies that sell parts to racers decided that mattered more than waiting to see how the litigation shakes out.<\/p>\n

Which brings this back to Jason Harris, and to a drag strip outside Greensboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Piedmont Dragway opened in 1957. For nearly seven decades, through every boom and bust this sport has been through, it ran races and earned a nickname it never had to defend: the Doorslammer Capitol of the World. Harris\u2019s father poured himself into that place. It was fully operational on the day the IHRA bought it. It did not open in 2026.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"\"\"<\/div>
Piedmont Dragway, the Doorslammer Capitol of the World, opened in 1957 and did not open in 2026. (Photos: Bobby Hunter and Justin Pegram via Facebook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The racing surface is still there, and so is the shutdown area, which is more than a lot of people feared. Everything else was left mid-project. By Harris\u2019s estimate it needs lights, a timing system, scoreboards, paving, walls and paint, and somewhere between $3 million and $3.5 million on top of whatever the purchase costs.<\/p>\n

He has been trying to put a deal together anyway. He spent four hours walking the property with investors, concrete crews, construction workers and tree crews, and he has not been able to make the numbers work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hundred thousand dollars doesn\u2019t hurt me as much as seeing my local racetracks disappear,\u201d Harris says. \u201cI never really had it in my hand, so I didn\u2019t really ever lose a hundred thousand dollars. The man didn\u2019t steal a hundred thousand dollars from me. It was just like me going to that race and losing first round.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I go to my local racetrack that my dad poured his heart and soul into, and I see it in shambles. That is hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal cases in Memphis will take years. Discovery alone will run well into next season, and the two sides are separated by roughly a billion dollars in competing claims.<\/p>\n

\n

Everybody who went a round at Hebron has been waiting 57 days.<\/p>\n

Drag Illustrated has reached out to Darryl Cuttell, to Darana Hybrid and to the IHRA. None have responded. We will continue reporting this story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This story was originally published on August 16, 2026. \"Drag<\/p>\n

The post Free Ice, Ferris Wheels, and a Federal Lawsuit<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anybody who worked the 2025 PRI Show in Indianapolis remembers the jackets. The International Hot Rod Association had a reported 100-plus people on site, an extraordinary number for a sanctioning body of any size, and a great many of them were wearing the same thing: a black softshell with the IHRA globe on the chest […]<\/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-104567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104567","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=104567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}