Alaska Raceway Park roared to life on Labor Day of 1964 as Polar Dragway.
The historic venue in Palmer, Alaska, embarks on a new era on Saturday. Racing will officially commence on the recently completed oval track as NASCAR comes to Alaska.
The visual spectacle of racing beneath 6,398-foot Pioneer Peak and in view of the Knik Glacier is unique for racers and fans alike, and the track with its glorious view in multiple directions is recognized by race fans worldwide. The site is at 63 feet elevation above sea level, offering excellent air density for racing.
Back in 1964, Governor Bill Egan cut the ribbon and thousands of fans cheered on the first 40 cars to drag race down the track. The only International Hot Rod Association sanctioned track in Alaska, ARP is a family business, run since 1998 by Earl and Karen Lackey, both in their mid-70s. The track is co-owned with their daughter, Michelle Lackey Maynor, who serves as Track Manager and Race Director.
Alaska joins Virginia’s Dominion Raceway, Wisconsin’s Spring Lake Speedway, and Eastboud Speedway in Canada’s Newfouland and Labrador, as new tracks in 2016 under the NASCAR Whelen All-AMerican Series banner.
It’s been a long road for Alaska, with a plenty of labor and love put into making oval track racing at the facility a reality.
Erecting grandstands in the dead of winter when the sun hardly rises a few hours per day and the metal is too cold to touch. Pete Mattison
Prior to the most recent expansion, Top End, Inc., and the Lackeys have funded major drag strip improvements and renovations since the 1990s: environmental cleanup, new entrances, bleachers, sound systems, building roofs, remodeling of the main building, gift shop, firefighting and track-cleaning equipment, staging area paving, pit paving, computerized timing system, new track bed and surface with a 300-foot heated concrete launch pad, and purchase of surrounding 182 acres to make the park permanent and add parking – in the process rejuvenating what was a flagging passion to a sport that is now growing yearly.
In 2016, the most major improvement of all is now a reality: a .333-mile asphalt oval, becoming a NASCAR Home Track in February 2016 in the Whelen All-American Series. This expansion and its attendant blood, sweat, and tears created a bona fide motorsports complex, the only of its kind in Alaska and remarkable for a state a fifth the size of the contiguous 48 states, with a population of less than 750,000.
The new track greatly expands racing opportunities for youth and adults in Alaska, and racers with nowhere else to race after a local grandfathered oval closed in 2012 are ecstatic to once again have a racing venue they are calling “amazing!” They love how smooth and fast it is proving to be. There is plenty of room to maneuver the racecar, with good speeds for the size. It’s a perfectly sized track for community weekly series racing, to accommodate all sorts of cars.
The Lackeys are working hard to make racing affordable for local racers and attract as many participants as possible.
The oval track is constructed on the site of a dirt oval on ARP property operated in the early 1980s and is below ground level so spectators won’t miss a second of the action. Following the Tesoro Inaugural Oval Debut on Saturday, there will be an additional nine oval race days in the 2016 season throughout the summer, with spectator capacity over 1500.
Kevin Nevalainen, the Director of Weekly Racing Operations at NASCAR, flew up from Daytona, Florida, this past winter to discuss with ARP owners their vision and plans. A day-long discussion and contract-signing resulted in a successful ARP sanction announcement at Daytona Speedweeks.
Architected by Earl Lackey and Dana Pruhs of Pruhs Construction, the talking phase of the asphalt oval track idea first took hold five years ago, but the local assembly would not modify the ARP permit to include the oval. Earl was persistent and succeeded in gaining approval in summer 2014.
With construction activities limited in the winter due to frozen ground and load limits on local roads, active construction began in 2014 and the project took 18 months. In fact, last-minute finishing touches are being worked on as of this writing, right up until the debut race on June 4.
The paver gets the checkered flag as it makes the final pass. Construction has been five years in the making for the oval facility. Pruhs Construction
Alaska Land Clearing crew made way for the track in fall of 2014, then Pruhs Construction leveled off the cleared space in spring of 2015. They sculpted in the track dimensions, processing material on site to use for foundation strength. After installing the foundation, they cut in the pit area and the parking area for the fans. After everything was sculpted in, Soper’s Concrete, headed by drag racer Monte Soper, poured the concrete footings where they had been surveyed in. Carson Construction poured the concrete walls on those footings. After curing, the Pruhs crew back-filled.
Earl created a preliminary electrical grid and started laying electrical into the property. Pruhs followed with a compacted base/leveling course over the sculpted track and the pit area, then sculpted and leveled off the infield in order to put top soil down. At that point it was late fall and time to wrap. The freeze/thaw cycle over the winter allowed the 2015 work to settle. Over the winter Earl, facility manager Pete Mattison, and crew got the track grandstands up, built a ticket booth, concession stands, spotters’ tower, race director’s tower, and tech inspection building.
As soon as the ground was thawed, AAA Fence installed the fence behind the barrier wall all around the track. With funding for emulsion from Tesoro, Pruhs paved the track and watered it to cool it down for three days. Straight stretches of the oval are 3 degrees; corners are progressive from 4, 8, to 11 degrees — 11 is about as steep of banking as can get in Alaska without special paving gear. There are two lanes to race. Asphalt is in two lifts: 1 ½” with coarse aggregate rock for structural. The last 1 ½” was fine asphalt mixed with small rock to make it smooth. The oval is about 1800 feet around; straight stretches are 400 feet and 50 feet wide; the curves are 158-foot inside radius and 80 feet wide.
Top soil was spread for the infield, followed by hydro-seeding for grass. Pruhs then striped the track and added start and finish lines. The scoreboard went up, and the lap counter system was installed.
The Lackeys have put everything on the line for this exciting expansion, and construction has been a family and racing community effort. Lackey sons John and Jim have pitched in during the construction process, and Pete, the facility manager, has been an indispensable and tireless coordinator and builder of the track’s necessary elements, such as the tower, grandstand, spotter’s deck, gift shop, concessions building, and tech station. The scoreboard and leaderboard came from Daktronics and were installed by DG Signs. Facility EMT John Akers worked under Pete’s guidance from November 2015, when the bleachers arrived from Florida on three semi-trailers.
Technology implemented in support of the new oval includes a state-of-the-art LED electronic timing system, the transponders to activate the timing system, and the raceceiver system which the drivers will be able to hear race director instructions. A new Matanuska Telephone Association fiber optic internet and phone feed helps the facility upgrade to incorporate technologies previously unavailable to the drag strip due to old electrical infrastructure and slow internet service.
Pete works with our I.T. volunteer, Cory Ricks, and uses a Xirrus WiFi Inspector software to plan track-wide frequencies for UHF radios, point-of-sale devices, Daktronics equipment on the scoreboard, wireless microphones, wi-fi access points, and spectator access to MyLaps SpeedHive.
Our recent promotions by press release and on social media have gained the attention of southcentral Alaska TV stations and newspapers, statewide racers and race fans who knew us only for drags, as well as caught the imagination of country-wide NASCAR followers on Twitter and Facebook. In Dana Pruhs’s words, “Alaska Raceway Park is a venue worthy of the greatest state in the Union!”
In-kind donors and sponsors include Tesoro Refining and Marketing, Pruhs Construction, Diversified Tire, Matanuska Telephone Association, Soper’s Concrete, Valley Block and Concrete, Carson Construction, Cruz Construction, Yukon Equipment, National Response Corporation, Carlisle Transportation, CMI Equipment, Airport Equipment Rental, E-Terra, Acutek Geomatics, New Horizons Telecom, J.D. Steel Co., Emerald Fuels, and AAA Fence.
A picturesque skyline looms over Alaska Raceway Park. Pruhs Construction
