The Purge is a famously-known movie franchise of action horror films depicting a dystopian version of America that observes an annual event known as “the Purge,” a 12-hour period during which all crime, including murder, is decriminalized. No-prep heavy hitter Ryan Mitchell, it turns out, only needed five hours to slay everyone on the property at the inaugural The Purge No-Prep, so he could perhaps be forgiven if he took advantage of the remaining time and hightailed North of the posted speed limit on the drive back home to Kansas City.
Jeff Thomas, the promoter who brought the world the now-famed War in The Woods no-prep at the Brown County Dragway in rural Indiana, ventured 64 miles to the southwest to partner with Jeremy Wagler and the team at Wagler Motorsports Park for the inaugural edition of The Purge, an event Thomas hopes to build to a similar level of success. Thomas, in an effort to test the waters with this new event, put the entire program together in just three weeks time, even assembling a stockpile of sponsors that included our good friends at Strange Engineering and ProCharger. Thomas knew this one would have humble beginnings, but every event must start somewhere.
Put together at the last minute, the overwhelming consensus was that what the event lacked in quantity, it absolutely made up for in quality. Consider the seminal round of Small Tire, which featured Mitchell, a terror from Indiana to Texas and all points in between, as well as Isaac Preston in the incredibly impressive “Frankenstein” C5 Corvette, Jasper Graham’s “LL Spool J” Fox body Mustang, and Dan Belchers’ sinister “Hate Tank” ’69 RoadRunner.
After getting tree’d by Preston and his twin-turbo Corvette at the hit in a titanic final round matchup for all the marbles, Mitchell drove around Preston at the stripe when he knocked the tire off and had to lift to maintain control of his beautiful machine.
A game-time decision to allow small-tire entries into Big Tire allowed Mitchell to score a double-up on the night. Mitchell ousted the big-tire car of Eric Trigalet in the opening round, and fellow Small Tire racer Trevor Niebrugge got by Doug Patterson’s big-tire Camaro, putting, ironically enough, a pair of smalls into the Big Tire final. In a solid contest that saw both cars under power all the way to the stripe, however, Mitchell simply had too much for Niebrugge and drove away to score his second win of the night.
Thomas will return to Wagler Motorsports Park for two races next year: Gangsters Paradise will move from Brown County and be contested on June 28-29, and the second running of The Purge will go down October 18-19.
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