Caraway Speedway sold to Robert Tyler, who has big plans

Caraway Speedway, the famed .455-mile short track in Sophia, North Carolina, has been acquired and the new ownership is set to fully takeover operations in time for the prestigious North-South Shootout in November.

The track has been operated by the Hackett family since 1977, with Russell and Valastra Hackett turning the reigns over to son Darren in 2010. The younger Hackett first starting working concessions in 1984. That is 43 years of operating the track with the Hacketts now selling the facility to racer and businessman Robert Tyler.

The new owner of the speedway has built a positive business reputation around businesses ‘Jumptastic’ and ‘Bounce House Atlanta’ in recent years after successful business ventures in the medical field prior to getting into the events space in 2022.

Tyler has also been a longtime Mid-Atlantic short track racer during this period too. His events specialist-background led him towards wanting to acquire a short track, leading him towards a conversation with Darren Hackett.

“I’ve been talking to Darren the better part of seven-to-eight years, just casually mentioning ‘if you ever sold it, I’d love to be the first one to have the opportunity to buy it,’ and then we aligned in February or March of this year on an initial conversation,” Tyler told Short Track Scene last week in advance of a planned formal announcement on Tuesday. “It got real serious in June, and we finished up the contract on Wednesday for a late October close.”

The most important takeaway is that Tyler is purchasing the race track to run it as a race track as a racer with an events background. Tyler has been promoting for five years, in a manner of speaking, but is now taking those skills to short track racing.

“Being in the event rental business with my business here in Atlanta, it all boils down to customer service and providing the best event possible for the people that are going to attend,” Tyler said. “You got to put yourself in the entertainment business, not necessarily the racetrack business. And you got to have that mindset.

“So we’re going to cater to the fan, we’re going to cater to the sponsors, and we’re going to cater to the drivers. And what I mean by that, from a fan experience, if a racetrack has good food, that’s something they talk about. It’s memorable. We’re going to have barbecue smokers on site. We’re going to cook fresh barbecue wings. We’re going to spice it up where the food is more fresh and it’s not just something coming out of freezer dropped in a fryer that’s got three-month old grease in there.

“We’re not just going to change the mentality of the food. When fans come through the gates, they’re going to have more to do than just wait on the races to start. We’re working on trackside suites. We’re going to have a really nice spotter stand in front of the tower at the start-finish line.”

The race track will also have what has also been described as a DoorDash style service for the trackside parking spots where fans can order food and have it delivered to their space.

For racers, Tyler says he plans on having an expedited entry process that can even begin the day before the race so they can drop their cars off early and just drive back to the track the next day. He will have ice chests available.

“We’re going to get rid of the ‘show up at 2 p.m. (and) get all the haulers parked in line, and stand people 300 deep to buy your pit pass’ thing,” Tyler said. “We’re going to have a rolling gate entry. So if they want to show up at eight o’clock in the morning, get everything done and drop their trailer the night before or the morning of, they can do that and go back home.

“We just want to eliminate the pit sign-in because it’s hot, you’ve got kids (and) it’s just too much hassle to stand there and wait for hours.”

Tyler says Caraway will continue to be NASCAR-sanctioned by Late Model Stock Cars as its Division I showcase. Right now, Caraway’s D1 division is the Limited Late Model but Tyler wants Caraway to be a showcase weekly track for the Late Model Stocks.

He also is planning a marquee ‘all star race’ for the Late Model Stocks in either May or June. How does Tyler plan to grow a Late Model Stock class in a new track?

“We are going to talk to them and understand their pain points,” Tyler said. “The leadership team that I’m assembling to help me with Caraway has probably hundreds of years of racing experience. So we understand the pain points. It’s not always just money. There are other things that racers want to see. They want to see a fast show. They want to see cautions be reduced to two-or-three laps if there’s nothing that warrants a longer cleanup.

“They need a race director who’s committed to listening more than they talk. Too many track owners, from what I look at, there’s too much bravado. They don’t listen to the product that they’re putting out. And without the drivers and the teams, we don’t have a product. We just have a facility. And we got to get the best of the best and create rivalries. I want a fair tech guy that doesn’t have any alliance or allegiance to any team.

“Racers just want someone that cares to listen about what they have going on. I can count on one hand, maybe even one finger, the number of times a promoter has ever asked me personally to come race at their facility and I have raced for 20 years. Racers rarely feel like they are wanted.

“South Boston’s probably the closest one to putting that out there now, and they’re seeing the fruits of that. And with Pulaski County up in the air again, IHRA up in the air again, there are a lot of racers who planned to be racing this year, and now they’re not, but they dusted everything off and spent a lot of money to go out there.

“We need to be reaching out to them to get them to our track and we’re starting to do that over the past couple of weeks.”

In addition to the racing product, Tyler will continue hosting car meets, demolition derby style shows and Monster Trucks.

All told, Tyler wants to focus on the racers and the racing fans.

“You go to Kaden Honeycutt and his team or some of these other top teams, and they bring sponsors in and they got people there, and they can’t take care of them because they’re working and they’re racing,” Tyler said. “And Kenneth (Packer) is the team owner but he’s busy too.

“We want to make sure that someone is taking care of their partners, and getting them food and drinks, all those minor things that add up to major things. To me, if a sponsor tells you they had a good time, guess what, they’re coming back.

“To me, people say the racing economy is bad and this or that, people are broke,” Tyler said. “But look at the cars and haulers that show up to the track. They’re in half a million dollar motor homes with five cars. That’s not a money problem. That’s a ‘we are not valuing their partners’ problem and that’s going to be our focus.”