Just a few pairs into last Wednesday night’a test session foe the $100,000-to-win no-time 275 Grudge Bowl at U.S. 60 Dragway, track owner Chris Mattingly knew something wasn’t right. Sparks flew from under eventual winner Jimmy Taylor’s car as it crossed the finish line. At first, Mattingly figured it was just a low-slung car catching something. But when video confirmed the car had lifted off the ground in the shutdown area, he made a decision most track owners wouldn’t even consider during a major event: tear up and repave part of the track. Overnight.

“I saw the video and I was like, ‘Man, this ain’t no good,’” Mattingly says. “You can’t have cars doing that, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Mattingly bought the Hardinsburg, Kentucky track that was originally opened in 1964, and its surface had worn with the passage of time.  He’s now spent the better part of two years rebuilding it from the ground up. A brand-new, all-concrete racing surface. 2,500 feet of newly-paved shutdown, and full-length concrete guardrails all the way to the end. Widened racing lanes, expanded parking, the facility got the works. “It’s not the same place anymore,” he affirms. “The only thing left from the old track is the tower and a piece of the concession stand.” Esteemed track specialist Kurt Johnson and his company Total Venue Concepts (TVC) supported the revitalization efforts, building what Mattingly explains is effectively an 1/8-mile version of the new Flying H Dragstrip in Missouri. Once the new surface was poured, Johnson ground it down to smooth, flawless perfection.

Despite the upgrades, a dip in the asphalt just past the finish line that appeared out of the blue caught everyone by surprise. “Kurt was there with us helping prep for the weekend, and he checked it after Jimmy’s run. He found the dip was an inch and a quarter deep. We thought about grinding it, filling it, maybe just trying to get by. But that would’ve just been a Band-Aid. It needed fixed, and right then.”

By midnight, Johnson was on his way to St. Louis to grab his grinding equipment from TVC HQ. Mattingly called a friend who owns an asphalt plant in Louisville and asked for a miracle. “He said, ‘When do you need it?’ I said, ‘We’re racing at 8 o’clock tonight.’ He loaded up his whole crew and came straight down.”

The team milled out a 20-by-40-foot section of asphalt just past the finish line, cleaned the area, laid fresh pavement, and cooled it down with water. While that was happening, Mattingly’s and Johnson’s team were dragging and radial-prepping the sticky track surface to be ready for racing again. It worked.

“It was a hell of a risk,” Mattingly admitted. “But if you’ve got cars flying in the shutdown and you don’t fix it, what are you even doing this for?”

The move paid off. Once dry, the U.S. 60 Dragway crew pressure-washed the new pavement and performed light prep so that it wouldn’t be slick, and racers went down it clean the rest of the weekend. What started as a potential black eye for the track ended in nothing but praise.

“I spent a ton of money on this place to make it as good as any track that you can compare it to. I was ready to put on this big event, and then the fifth or sixth pair of cars go down and this happens. By the time they showed me the video, the internet was already going crazy. They were saying, ‘this is unsafe.’ A lot of tracks will just deal with it, and that’s fine. But I wasn’t going to do that — I’m going to figure out how to fix the problem as fast as possible, because I want this track to be the best. We had all these fast cars here, and if everyone leaves here saying ‘oh, yeah, that was a decent track but it has a dip,’ that would have killed us.”

“Once we fixed the transition, everybody was tickled to death with it, and now see the internet has nothing but positive feedback — that’s what we were going for,” he continues.

“Everything came together perfectly for us right in time. The guys worked on that thing for almost 24 hours, if you count the drive time and all. We just did what it took to get it done.”

“You get one shot with these guys,” Mattingly adds. “You can tell people how good your track is all day, but until they actually come and see it, it’s all just talk. This weekend proved it.”

Mattingly says the goal is clear: make U.S. 60 Dragway a destination for heads-up and radial racers. “You don’t spend this kind of money just to hold test and tunes,” he says. “We’re going after the big stuff. And now, I think people see that we’re serious.”