Fans Swarm Mustang Week’s New Drag Racing Venue

In its 16^th year, Mustang Week has embraced change to keep its popular enthusiast event moving into the future. From changing the dates to relocating several events, this year’s event offered many of the same features, but many in different locations. Case in point is the drag racing Test ’N Tune day moving to North Myrtle Beach Dragway, which is much closer to the rest of the week’s action.

“So far so good,” Brad Worley of Mustang Week enthused. “I am impressed with the guys that run the place. They were here early this morning track-prepping. We advertised that we were starting at 10 o’clock and at 10 past 10 we were running cars down the drag strip.”

In previous years, racers and spectators had to travel nearly two hours to the closest drag strip. That meant separating the hardcore 1,320 fans from those who might rather stick around and enjoy the beach. This year, the event was close enough that everyone could sample some drag racing.

We’ve got completely blue skies and I am not roasting at Mustang Week for a change. — Brad Worley, Mustang Week

Perhaps even better than the proximity to the beach was the more livable temperatures delivered during the week’s later run.

“This is unbelievable,” Brad said. “We’ve got completely blue skies and I am not roasting at Mustang Week for a change. It actually feels really good.”

Based on the constant traffic in and out of the track, which overwhelmed the local roads, we’d say most people did make the trip to enjoy the racing action in the moderate weather — some for the first time. At some points during the day the traffic was so backed up going into the track that local authorities turned potential attendees away.

“They are lined up and a little slow getting through the gates, but you’ve got to make sure that everybody signs the waiver and has the right armbands,” Brad explained.

Fortunately, we were there from the jump and able to capture the action on the track and in the pits this year. There were a few times the track went down because of an oildown or an unfortunate crash, but for the most part racers were getting in plenty of steady runs between track prep.

The track is an old school, eighth-mile facility with no clocks (perfect for the grudge racing that was scheduled after the Mustang Week event officially ended), so we didn’t get to document any e.t.’s, but we did see plenty of great cars run, so keep scrolling to see what we spotted.

On Friday the big day arrives at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, which will host its first Mustang Week car show, so stay tuned for our continuing coverage of the event.