Ever joked with your crew about chipping in to buy a drag strip? Here’s your shot. Darryl Cuttell, who owns the International Hot Rod Association, just put twelve of them up for sealed-bid auction. Most sit on massive parcels of land with multiple tracks and facilities, so scraping together beer money won’t cut it. But given the mess Cuttell is dealing with, you might score a deal.
The mess in question goes beyond racing. Cuttell claims Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI owes his company, Darana Hybrid, more than six hundred million dollars. Darana Hybrid apparently builds data centers, and SpaceXAI fired back saying Cuttell overcharged to bankroll track renovations. That lawsuit is still grinding through the courts while the racing world watches these properties hit the market.
How the IHRA Fell Apart
These tracks wound up for sale after the IHRA collapsed in dramatic fashion. In July 2026, the sanctioning body axed the rest of its Nitro Drag Racing Series calendar with no warning and laid off most of its staff. The fallout has been brutal. Racers, sponsors, and track employees were left scrambling, and now the physical assets are being liquidated.
The auction listings live on tranzon.com, and they pitch these properties hard for redevelopment. Memphis International Raceway leads the pack with over 342 acres described as “prime for development.” It has a 4,400-foot drag strip and a three-quarter-mile oval that used to host NASCAR. The listing practically winks at developers salivating over condos or warehouses.
What’s Actually For Sale
Some legitimate racing landmarks are on the block. Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka has been a drag racing staple for decades. Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina once welcomed the NASCAR Cup Series. Several tracks got renamed under Cuttell’s ownership, so you might not recognize them at first glance. National Trail Raceway in Hebron, Ohio, is now listed as Darana Raceway.
The full roster includes facilities in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Kansas, Virginia, and New York. That’s a dozen tracks spread across the eastern half of the country, each with infrastructure that took years and serious money to build. Watching them all go up for auction at once stings.
The Bigger Picture
Racetracks have been disappearing for years. Land values climb, property taxes go up, and suddenly selling to a developer looks more appealing than dealing with noise complaints and thin margins. When a dozen more hit the market simultaneously, it feels like watching dominoes fall. Some buyer with deep pockets could keep them running, but the listings themselves seem written for someone planning to pave paradise and put up a data center.
The sealed-bid format means you won’t know what it takes to win until someone else outbids you. If you have the capital and the will to keep a track alive, the opportunity is real. But so is the risk that we’re about to lose another chunk of American motorsports infrastructure to whatever pays better on a spreadsheet.
I don’t have the cash to jump in, and honestly, trying to run one of these places while Cuttell sorts out a nine-figure lawsuit with Musk sounds like a special kind of headache. But someone should buy these tracks who actually cares about racing. We’ve lost too many already.
