More than half a century after it last hosted a National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) national event, Oklahoma’s Osage Casino Tulsa Raceway Park could soon find itself back on the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series calendar. Sources close to the discussions say Tulsa is a leading candidate for the 23rd race of what is expected to be a full 24-event 2021 series schedule, and if the deal indeed comes to fruition, could be announced as early as the first of next week.

The NHRA and Tulsa Raceway Park have a unique past. Known then as the Southwest Raceway, the very first World Finals were held at Tulsa in 1965, and the season-ending, championship-deciding race was contested there through 1968. Four years later, however, Tulsa served as the site of arguably the most successful act of defiance in drag racing history, when Don Garlits and the competing American Hot Rod Association held the National Challenge, a $25,000-to-win (per class) race in direct opposition to the NHRA’s crown jewel U.S. Nationals over Labor Day weekend. It has operated under NHRA sanctioning since, even hosting a Division 4 points meet, but never another NHRA national event.

Tulsa continued to host nationally-attended racing events through the mid-1990s, including additional runnings of the AHRA and PRO National Challenge and the AHRA Spring Nationals, ADRA national events, and the aforementioned NHRA points meet featuring special Top Fuel, Funny Car, and Pro Stock fields. In the early 1990s it received an IHRA national event, and after a lengthy hiatus, returned to the IHRA lineup from 2007-09. In 2011 it was sold to a developer and its demise seemed imminent, but a subsequent lease deal to local racers and businessmen Keith Haney and Todd Martin proved fruitful, and their eventual purchase of the facility has led to nearly a decade of property improvements that have made this rumor of a major NHRA event possible.