Things That Go Vroom: Stock Cars

Dirt bike at Kodiak Island Raceway. Kodiak Island Racing Association/Facebook

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

Fans of all things fast and furious may soon see cars competing again at the Kodiak Island Raceway, after a lengthy hiatus.

Racers young and young at heart currently compete on dirt bikes and other off-road vehicles, but the Kodiak Island Racing Association will discuss incorporating stock cars at the meeting tonight, the first of the season.

Member Craig DeHart says he’s open to all kinds of racing and wants to see attendance go up. He says, right now, about 20 to 30 spectators come to the races, which happen every other weekend.

“We used to have 60, 70 plus people out there I remember growing up, anyways,” says DeHart.

DeHart says that if drivers do step up, the Association needs to do some work on the circle track.

“There’s a retaining wall that goes in front of the grand stands,” says DeHart. “Over the years it’s deteriorated and is falling down and needs to repaired before we can legally race a car out there.”
But first, they need participants.

Athenas Williamson is the vice-president of the Kodiak Island Racing Association. She says that they’ll approve stock car racing if enough drivers express interest.

“We want them to commit to a certain amount of races a year,” says Williamson. “And we’ll just have to bring the track up to the standards for the cars because there is minor repairs that have to be addressed before we can have cars on the actual race track. But before we do any of that, we want to make sure that we have people committed to doing it.”

If you’d like to volunteer at the raceway for the upcoming season, you can attend the meeting in the Kodiak Electric Association conference room at 6:30 p.m.. Williamson notes that attendees should enter through the building side door.