Editor’s note: On Wednesday, March 2, 2016, journalist Thomas Geyer posted this article in the Quad-City Times newspaper, pages A1 and A3. It is reprinted here with permission. The photo shows Arnie “The Farmer” Beswick, Morrison, IL, resident, driving one of his “Tameless Tiger” vehicles. Beswick is a much-lauded driver and appears at the Cordova International Raceway.
After a 61-year run at the Cordova International Raceway, the World Series of Drag Racing will be moving to Memphis[, TN].
The raceway’s owner, IRG Sports + Entertainment, announced Tuesday[, March 1, 2016,] that the race will move to its Memphis International Raceway facility the weekend of August 26-27.
It is the second signature event the Cordova track has lost for the summer, as the Summer Nationals set for June have been cancelled.
“The village, we’re going to survive, of course,” Village President Dean Moyer said Tuesday. “It’s going to cost us some tax revenue, and some businesses will suffer. That’s a big weekend.”
“I don’t know what the catalyst was to make this all start happening. I’m thinking this track doesn’t have long to live. If they keep it open, it will be a shoestring operation.”
Moyers said the race in Memphis won’t really mean much in Memphis. “It was a pride thing up here,” he said.
Joe Taylor, President and CEO of the Quad-Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he was not surprised that the Quad-Cities is “losing the world’s oldest continuous drag racing event ever.”
“There were probably 15,000 people in the stands on a Friday and a Saturday night during those races,” Taylor said. “One of the first places to feel the loss will be the towns along Illinois 84. Fans won’t be buying sandwiches, gasoline, and ice and all the things that go along with a weekend at Cordova.”
The track will continue to operate with its weekly bracket racing, he said, “but the loss of its two largest events will certainly have an impact.”
Taylor said that moving the World Series of Drag Racing to Memphis is like the Kentucky Derby moving from Churchill Downs. “Would the mint juleps taste the same elsewhere? I don’t think it will be the same,” he said. “I’ve not seen the Memphis International Raceway, but it won’t have the feel that Cordova had and the history going back.”
In a news release issued Tuesday, IRG Sports + Entertainment said the move to Memphis puts the event in a centralized location that can handle growth and bring in more racers, fans, vendors, and live music.
Charles Lencheski, Vice Chairman of the Board and CEO of IRG Sports + Entertainment, said the company thinks “the World Series of Drag Racing will become a lifestyle event, similar to what Comic-Con is for the fans of sci-fi comics in San Diego[, CA]. We plan to continue the existing traditions and add some new, exciting elements to drag racing’s premiere fan event.”
According to IRG Sports + Entertainment, the World Series of Drag Racing began in Lawrenceville, IL, in 1953 and moved to the Cordova International Raceway in 1954.
