NHRA Junior Dragsters at Irwindale: 2014 Series Race Dates Announced

Irwindale CA, Feb 4 2014 - This weekend (February 6-9) Auto Club Raceway at Pomona will host the NHRA Circle K Winternationals the kickoff event of the 2104 season: with tires lighting up, trap speeds climbing, and ET numbers dropping like rocks. It's four full days of flat-out, mind-blowing drag racing that rocks that race track like no other event ... And many of the top pros who create all that excitement got their starts in the NHRA Junior Drag Racing League.

Which leads us to the announcement that Irwindale Dragstrip will again run a 2014 series of NHRA championship racing events for the quick kids (age 8 to 17) in Junior Dragsters beginning with a two-day meet on the weekend of February 15-16.

Two more double race event (two complete points events in one day) Junior Drag gatherings will follow at Irwindale on Saturday, May 24 and Saturday, July 26.

These real racecars are rear-engine, single-cylinder, half-scale replicas of the fearsome top fuel machines that threaten the three hundred mile-per-hour barrier every time they take to the track at the big NHRA pro meets.

The Juniors are a wonderful learning tool. In fact, there's no better example than NHRA's 2013 Top Fuel World Champion, Shawn Langdon. In 1997, as a 14 year old, Langdon won the national Junior Dragster title and, by 2005, the skills he learned in the Juniors took him to Super Comp titles at the JEGS Allstars races in 2005 and 2006 and on to back-to-back (2007-2008) national Super Comp titles in the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series.

"One of the really neat aspects of the Juniors racing at Irwindale is the scale of the track," said Irwindale's Director of Operations Bob Klein. "We're an eighth-mile race course, so the lights and the speed trap are exactly correct for the Juniors' set-up. Because our track is a street-legal facility the spectator seating and crowd control fences are a lot closer to the action than on a quarter-mile track that needs fans set back quite a bit further from the strip."

"One more thing," Klein added, "These youngsters are all very serious about the racing, they're learning about competition, sportsmanship, and teamwork. They're almost as much fun to watch when they're in the pits getting ready to race as when they're out on the dragstrip."

Which leads to the fact that, as with all NHRA races, the pits at Irwindale Dragstrip are always open to the public, there's no extra charge to catch the pit action drama as teams prep between rounds. In other words, NHRA Junior Drag Racing is the place where fans can really see (and meet!) the stars of tomorrow (and the day after tomorrow), watch them sharpen their skills and learn what it really takes to be competitive.

As above, all of these 2014 NHRA Junior Drag Racing weekend events at Irwindale Dragstrip are open to the public (and these kids really appreciate fans coming out to watch too!). Gates will open early (7am) with qualifying getting to the line at 10:45am and eliminations beginning at noon. Spectators are $10, kids 6-12 are $5 and youngsters under 5 are free.

We'll see you at IRRR-WINNN-DALE Dragstrip!

Source: Irwindale Event Center