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Hurricane Rita Forces NHRA to Postpone Dallas Race

Written by David Lamm · September 22, 2005

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, another Category five hurricane is bearing down on the gulf coast of Texas. Although the Houston and Galveston metropolitan areas are expected to be hit with the full force of the storm, NHRA officials have postponed the O’Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals scheduled for this weekend outside of Dallas.


ESPN.com: Dallas-area event moved to Oct. 6-9
NHRA.com: NHRA family prepares for onslaught of Hurricane Rita

News and weather services are projecting Hurricane Rita’s path will move north through Texas after making landfall near Houston late Friday or early Saturday. The projected path could follow Interstate 35 directly north and the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas would get a huge amount of rain if Rita continues on course. NHRA officials made the right decision in postponing the race not only from a racing standpoint but from a humanitarian point of view as well.

Drag cars can not race when the track is even the slightest bit wet. Hurricane Rita will make sure of that. Even if the NHRA wanted to roll the dice and hope the race would finish on Sunday before the storm’s rains hit, that would be a dicey call at best. Even if the event was completed before the rains arrived in the area, what about after the race? Many of the NHRA teams leave a race the following Monday and surely the hurricane’s wrath would affect the travel of the teams, fans and NHRA officials. No need to take the risk and force all involved to tough it out.

With the postponement another positive has come from this. The huge amount of hotel rooms that were originally reserved for fans, race teams and NHRA officials are now available for evacuees. Residents of the greater Houston area that are evacuating the area have had trouble trying to find lodging away from the projected area of landfall. All the hotels in the bigger cities like San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and Waco are completely booked up. Some Houston residents have been forced to travel as far as Oklahoma City or over to Arkansas in order to find lodging during the hurricane. With the NHRA postponing the race, those hotel rooms can now be made available for those that are fleeing the storm and desperately in need of shelter.

Overall, the quick and timely decision was made by the NHRA brass to postpone the O’Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals. Although at the time, NHRA officials might not have known the postponement will be helping those evacuees who need hotel rooms. Just a positive after effect that I am sure the residents escaping the storm may not know about but are grateful it did. Keep the Houston based racers like Erica Enders and the Nickens family, NHRA.com senior writer Rob Geiger along with all of those that live in the Houston area in your thoughts. We can only hope that Rita is more kind than her sister Katrina was to New Orleans.

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Comments

One Response to “Hurricane Rita Forces NHRA to Postpone Dallas Race”

  1. JERIMAH MERRITT on September 24th, 2005 2:27 am

    i guess theres more important things than racing. a lot of people need uor help.So why cant we do it.

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