Jorge Maria
Luskville July 3, 2021
The Luskville Dragway celebrated its second week after reopening in a hail of burnt rubber and smoke.
The dragway hosted The Canadian Bracket Supertour with a grand prize of $5,000 up for grabs. It was a packed raceway with more than a hundred cars competing officially. Part owner Arnie Malcolm couldn’t have asked for a better weekend. “Incredible,” Malcolm said.
A regular season is usually from May until September, but COVID-19 caused a lot of uncertainty in the previous year. “The bottom line is we survied,” Malcolm said. “We actually did better than survive. We have upgraded our race track; we’re probably the most sophisticated, best racetrack in the country at the eighth mile ratio.
“Right now the drivers are running on a solid concrete racetrack. Laser poured by the largest concrete company in Canada,” he added.
Long time drag racing veteran Mike Chenier has been in love with the sport since he was 16 and came to this very track for the first time 40 years ago. For him it has always been about “Ffast cars,” he said. With top prize up for grabs, he was already down two races and hoping to make it up in the next race in the Super Pro category — the elite of drag racing.
There is money to be made, but just the cost of fuel is $20,000 per year, so his goal is just to cover expenses.
Passion over profit is what drives independent racers like Claude Trudeau and Gord Blackwell. Both men are retired mechanics and built their own “funny car” dragster. A funny car is a vehicle with a regular street chasis such as a Ford Mustang, that uses a high-performance engine required for drag racing.
“Paying other people to build and maintain your engines can get expensive,” Trudeau said. So building your own is much more affordable.
“I always wanted to build a car and race her,” Blackwell said.
The raceway has no restrictions to what types of vehicles are allowed to enter. Early in the afternoon a family SUV went down the track to the roar of the crowd. By 6 p.m. over 200 drivers with street-cars showed up to test their skills on the dragway.
In the Spring no one knew if the track would open for the season, but Malcolm was certain. “I’ve been an optimist all my life, right? Other people were saying, ‘Oh, we won’t race this year;’ I kept saying Yes, we will. Yes, we will,” Malcolm said.
