From the great news announced this week in Reading — Pennsylvania, that is — we switch gears to Redding. California, that is.
Once the world center of drag racing, the marriage between the sport and the Golden State has long since ended, progress wiping many legendary facilities from existence and leaving but a handful of strips in the nation’s most populous state. But a pair of grassroots racers are working to ensure the longevity of a track that has outlasted many of the long-closed giants in the state like Lions and Orange County and Fremont, bringing it up to present-day standards and providing locals with a high-quality venue for acceleration contests for years to come.
The Redding Dragstrip, located in the very northern part of California, between the San Francisco Bay area and the Washington state line, is believed to be the oldest continuously NHRA-sanctioned dragstrip in the nation. When the 1/4-mile racing facility came up for grabs, racers and promoters Jesse Adams and his business partner, Tony Trimp, already with a connection to the facility, jumped at the opportunity.
Shirlene Bramson, the previous owner and operator at Redding, had arranged a unique 501(c)(3) non-profit agreement with the city, wherein the city government owns the land and assumes the property tax costs, leaving the dragstrip and its structures and equipment as a separate entity. Bramson decided at the close of last season she wanted to focus her time on her real estate business, and she didn’t have to look far to find a successor.
“We did a track rental there during Covid and it did really well, and so we kept doing our T&A Race Club track rentals at multiple racetracks,” Adams says. “Last October, she called and said she was ready to sell the track and offered for us to buy it and take over. She didn’t want to see the track close, and so we were her first call. I called Tony and he said, ‘let’s do it,’ and we jumped on it. It didn’t take us five…
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