As seen on Hagerty
By Steven Cole Smith
https://www.hagerty.com/media/author/steven-cole-smith/
A website called Tranzon.com, which bills itself as “A Better Way to Sell Real Estate,” is at this moment hosting 143 property auctions in 31 states. They range from a 10,400-acre coastal rainforest ranch in Belize to a series of row houses in Philadelphia to a pet hotel in Houston.
But in the last 24 hours, Tranzon.com—which has offices across the country, although Tranzon Auction Properties is based in Portland, Maine—has been inundated with online hits from motorsports fans wanting to learn more about the dozen racetracks owned by the financially strapped International Hot Rod Association and which are now up for sealed-bid auction on the Tranzon website.
As you’ve hopefully read in Hagerty’s coverage, which dates back to April of 2025 with this story, plus this deep-dive published last August 12, the IHRA is a second-tier drag racing sanctioning body that, since it was founded about 12 or 13 owners ago in 1970, has always operated in the shadow of the much larger National Hot Rod Association.
This drama revolves around a businessman named Darryl Cuttell, founder of Darana Hybrid, a Hamilton, Ohio-based company that describes itself thusly on its website: “A Native American owned and operated international electro-mechanical contractor. Expertise in food & beverage, distribution & fulfillment, and material handling industries.” Cuttell, flush with cash from building data centers in the Memphis, Tennessee area for the richest man in the world, Elon Musk—and possibly relying on income from future data center deals with him—bought the struggling IHRA from drag racing chassis builder Larry Jeffers, under whom the IHRA had become sufficiently underwater to the point where Jeffers cancelled the last half of the 2024 season. Cuttell purchased the IHRA from Jeffers in December of 2024.
Cuttell spent 2025 and the first half of 2026 buying a bizarre selection of working and closed-down racetracks, as well as boat and hydroplane series, a snowmobile series, a jetski series, some tractor-pull series—many of us speculated that Cuttell was either a genius or nuts. We can’t say that this was when Cuttell stopped returning calls, because he never returned calls in the best of times. But last spring, it was obvious something was wrong.
During the summer, Cuttell seemed to retreat home to Hamilton, until he surfaced when he tried to sell the IHRA for $500 million, including all the tracks. One prospect was NHRA team owner Richard Freeman, who flew to Ohio to inspect some trucks and trailers Cuttell was selling. As Freeman told Hagerty, Cuttell complained during their visit, more than once, that Musk owed him $600 million. You did not have to be a mathematician to deduce from what Cuttell told news outlets in Memphis that he was due a total of $1.5 billion from Musk, of which Musk had apparently paid $900 million. Which is ostensibly where the Musk-owes-me-$600-million mantra originated.
But you do not poke the world’s wealthiest bear without expecting him to snarl. Musk’s data-center company, now operating under the umbrella of Space xAI, promptly sued Cuttell, claiming that he and Darana Hybrid overbilled “by hundreds of millions of dollars while selling out their own suppliers and subcontractors along the way,” and “diverted money to Cuttell’s personal side projects,” which would be the IHRA, and the racetracks he bought both before and after the IHRA acquisition.
To say those racetracks are an eclectic collection is an understatement. They range from the former NHRA-owned drag strip outside Atlanta, of which little remains but two strips of pavement and a weedy, cracked asphalt parking lot; to Rockingham Speedway, the NASCAR-visited oval in South Carolina; to Memphis Motorsports Park, which used to be a drag strip, road course, a paved oval where NASCAR used to race, and a dirt oval where the World of Outlaws sprint cars once competed.
Those 12 venues are expected to go to the highest bidders when Tranzon closes the auctions on November 17 at 6 p.m. ET. Note that some tracks are named “Darana,” such as Darana Motorsports Park-Milan, indicating that it’s in Milan, Michigan, southwest of Detroit. “Darana” is reportedly a portmanteau of the first name of the man who bought the IHRA, Darryl Cuttell, and his sister Diana’s name. For reasons he has never divulged, Cuttell broomed the names that some of these facilities had long been known by, and renamed them “Darana”-something.
Off-the-record sources have shared assertions of what Cuttell paid for several of the tracks. It’s a big figure; one that’s unlikely to be matched by the upcoming sales. Also notable: Maple Grove Raceway, a valuable property in Pennsylvania, isn’t included in the auction, as it went back to the owners that Cuttell bought it from last December, the Koretsky family. It is expected that the Koretskys would like to have the NHRA come back and hold a national event there, which the NHRA had indeed scheduled for this year but had to cancel at the last minute when the IHRA bought the track. Maybe the NHRA, which was roundly surprised by the top-secret Maple Grove purchase, will return if its management has forgiveness in their hearts. It’s a big “if.”
There are a few things motorsports fans might want to know. The first is a reminder that local zoning laws dictate land use, so while these properties can continue to be used as racing facilities, they could also become any number of other things, including data centers or housing developments, with proper state and local approval. Reportedly, only one of the properties has a balance that must be satisfied, and another was lease-to-own. And finally, there is this caveat from Tranzon: “Subject to Sale Prior to the Auction without Notice – Pre-Auction Offers Welcomed.” Unless a suitable bid is submitted, the property may or may not sell. Some tracks are still operating, some tracks could be operating with a little work, and some tracks need to be rebuilt practically from scratch. Buyers should expect to submit a 10% deposit and pay a 10% auction fee. Details differ from one listing to another.
And finally, Darryl Cuttell’s favorite color is a very intense chartreuse, and he has painted his trackside buildings to match the exterior and some of the interior of his Darana Hybrid plant. Some tracks may have painted over the fluorescent yellow-green, most have not. Yet.
Facebook/IHRA
In no particular order, the following are the 12 available properties:
Darana Motorsports Park, Milan, Michigan It’s a quarter-mile drag strip located on 317 acres, and includes a motocross track. Located just off Highway 23, which links Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio, it has a “longstanding history as a premier racing and automotive event venue.” Milan has always been a regional track, not a national one. Cuttell sunk a lot of money into improvements.
Cameron Neveu
Darana Raceway Hebron, Ohio. Located a mile from Interstate 70 near Columbus, Ohio, and known for years as National Trail Raceway, the drag strip dates back to 1964. It’s located on about 230 acres and has hosted national NHRA events. It’s a solid venue.
Darana Raceway Xenia, Ohio. Located near Dayton, and formerly known as Kil-Kare Raceway, it opened in 1951 and may be better known for the three-eighths-mile banked paved oval than for its quarter-mile concrete drag strip. No mention of acreage.
Darana Dragway West Salem, Ohio. Formerly known as Dragway 42, it has “convenient access to the broader Cleveland–Akron–Medina market,” the listing says. The track opened in 1957, and sits on about 300 acres.
Tranzon
Tranzon
Rockingham Speedway, Marston, North Carolina. A bit of a white elephant, Rockingham Speedway is a nearly mile-long, paved-oval track that hosted the NASCAR Cup Series from 1965 to 2004. There’s also a 1.5-mile road course in the infield that is probably suitable for club racing. It is widely believed that a NASCAR oval track can’t really be profitable unless it hosts at least one Cup race per season, which would explain why Rockingham, or “The Rock,” was closed on and off for years. For 2026, it hosted, successfully, the second-tier NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, and a third-tier NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, but given the questionable ownership situation, NASCAR won’t return in 2027 with any of its three top series. Why Cuttell wanted it is anyone’s guess. But the first line of the online listing may speak more to Rockingham Speedway’s future than its past: “243± Acres—Significant land area with large-scale development potential.” Rockingham Speedway should not be confused with Rockingham Dragway, located across the street—that track just hosted an NHRA event, and appears to be profitable for its owners, none of whom are named Cuttell. The Rock would be a great test track for NASCAR teams, if NASCAR allowed independent testing. It does not.
Tranzon
Piedmont Dragway, Julian, North Carolina. This eighth-mile drag strip, located on an odd-shaped 98 acres that resembles an old Pontiac logo, is near Greensboro, North Carolina, and is one of those mom-and-pop facilities that seems to stay busy. It might attract a local owner who wants to keep it going as a drag strip.
Darana Motorsports Park, Benson, North Carolina. I’ve never been there, but when this was Galot Motorsports Park, I heard some good things. It’s an eighth-mile drag strip located on 112 acres due south of Raleigh. There’s a dirt tractor-pull track next to the strip; the whole facility looks really good in pictures, and somebody—not Cuttell—spent a lot of money building that place. This is another facility that stands a good chance of remaining a racetrack if the price is right.
Tranzon
Memphis International Raceway, Memphis, Tennessee. Ooh boy, there’s a backstory here. I had high hopes for this place, located in my hometown. Memphis was once where Cuttell headquartered his Darana Hybrid company before moving it to Ohio. As a side note, he didn’t spend all of the Elon-Musk-made money on racing: Cuttell donated $10 million to a place that is near to my heart, St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, where I once volunteered. As to MIS, this complex consisted of a quarter-mile drag strip, a three-quarter-mile banked oval, a 1.8-mile road course, and a half-mile dirt oval track—and all four hosted professional racing with the NHRA, NASCAR, Trans Am, and the World of Outlaws. Cuttell pledged that he would invest over $30 million to bring it back. Won’t happen. The listing touts “heavy-industrial zoning, rail access, existing utilities, and approved sewer access, along with conceptual plans supporting 4M+ SF of logistics development and 42+ MW of potential power capacity.” Read into that what you want, but to me, it doesn’t say “racing.”
Facebook/IHRA
Atlanta Dragway, Commerce, Georgia. This is an interesting one: The original Atlanta drag strip was owned by the NHRA, which closed it down and left town. The tower was demolished and the grandstands were sold off, leaving a few buildings and the drag strip. Cuttell bought the property and pledged to rebuild it, but it didn’t work out. This is really more of an opportunity to buy 343 acres that happened to once be a drag strip; whether it will be once again is anyone’s guess.
Heartland Motorsports Park, Topeka, Kansas. Heartland, a personal favorite, may be the saddest story of all here. The track opened in 1989 as a first-class drag strip, a 2.5-mile road course, and a three-eighths-mile dirt oval. The road course hosted the Sports Car Club of America Runoffs (the SCCA’s headquarters are in Topeka), as well as NASCAR O’Reilly and Craftsman Truck races, and the World of Outlaws competed on the dirt oval. The NHRA ran some national-level races on the drag strip. But a variety of issues, including a tax dispute, resulted in a shutdown of all the major racing there. It’s a great track—both the drag strip and the road course—but it has barely hung on with a handful of local and regional events. In what by now must sound like a broken record, Cuttell bought it and had big plans to renovate it, and work actually began on making that happen. Then, overnight, everybody was laid off and now the track is up for auction. There are 623 acres available, and as the listing says, “Suitable for motorsports/event operators, industrial developers, or land investors.”
Tranzon
Virginia Motorsports Park, Petersburg, Virginia. Surely someone will buy VMP and keep it running as a drag strip: It’s a first-class facility, with a 23,000-seat grandstand, a lovely three-story main building and tower with 14 VIP suites, offices, and a press box, located on about 500 acres that’s a half-hour south of Richmond. It has hosted national-level NHRA races, has 60 acres of paved and packed-stone pit parking, and will long be known as the site of drag racing legend John Force’s near-fatal, career-ending crash at the Virginia Nationals in June of 2024. Fingers crossed for its future.
Tranzon
Empire Dragway, Leicester, New York. And finally, last and possibly least is Empire Dragway, about 60 miles southeast of Buffalo. Opened in 1971, Empire has faced some tough times, closing and reopening on multiple occasions. I’ve never been there, but the photos show a well-curated facility that’s located on about 272 acres. Its website leaves the impression of a bustling little regional track, but given its middle-of-nowhere location, it could be a tough sell.
Tranzon
And that’s it. There are positives and negatives about every available track, but there are opportunities here to own some nice racing facilities—and/or a lot of acreage for other purposes. Hopefully we’ll know by the end of November what the future holds for this not-so-dirty dozen.