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Article from the Chillicothe Gazette
CHILLICOTHE — The return of Atomic Speedway is near.
New owner Brad McCown, who also owns Jackson County Speedway, officially announced late Tuesday that the famed Ross County dirt track, which also has operated under the name K-C Raceway, will reopen. A new opening date will be released soon, according to Bruce Hines, who will handle public relations and race day announcing duties.
McCown said Sprints, Late Models, Street Stocks, Modifieds and Sport Modifieds will be the primary classes on the famed high banks. He plans to run a few races this year, based on interest from race car drivers and fan attendance. He also plans to base his decision on what classes to run in the future on fan attendance.
The sale ends two years of dormancy for the dirt track, which has hosted some of the biggest names in racing through the years and is located on Blain Highway, just south of Chillicothe. McCown bought the track from Jim Nier Sr.
The 3/8-mile track has sat idle since Nier re-assumed ownership from Jeff and Vicki Schrader in early 2012. The track missed all of the 2012 racing season, but McCown hopes the track will host some events this year.
“We’ll hopefully have some races sometime in August if everything goes good,” McCown said in a Gazette story earlier this month. “We’re probably going to try and run two or three.”
“When I started getting serious about this all that I heard was that people wanted to see Sprint cars and we had to call it the Atomic once again,” McCown said in a release from Hines. “Well, we are going to give them both he stated recently. If you give them a good show at a fair price, the racers and fans will come, and that is what we plan to do.”
McCown will manage race day activities, and Jeremy “JJ” Linkous will be race director for the track.
In the past, famed drivers such as Tony Stewart, Sarah Fisher, Sammy Swindell, Steve and Matt Kinser and many others have raced on the dirt oval at Atomic/K-C
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