Todd Okuhara, local racing connoisseur, is looking to bring drag racing back to all-too-quiet Hawaii, Dragzine reports. The dragster reportedly owns a machine shop in Kaka’ako and dreams of bringing back Hawaii Raceway Park, which vanished as “another victim of urban sprawl, like Lions, and Orange County, and Ontario, and Irwindale in Southern California. All that’s left is what we can remember of it,” says Dragzine writer Susan Wade.
Sophomore accounting major from Honolulu, Jay Kawana, would love a drag racing comeback. He said, “There’s big historical significance to Hawaii Raceway Park. My dad told me it opened in the '60s and people loved it. I hope Mr. Okuhara is able to reopen it and get Hawaii back on the map in drag racing—some of the local residents over there would have that tradition back in their lives.”
Mary Simms, of Hawaii News Now, writes the area closed to racers in 2006, and the track was officially destroyed in 2013. According to Simms, racers have been mourning the loss ever since.
Wade says Okuhara is out to change that. He is responsible for many tasks at Don Schumacher Racing and travels the country for 24 races in all the major markets, simultaneously checking in on the fabrication and machine shops at the DSR headquarters in Brownsburg, Indiana, and overseeing “the seven teams that collectively have dominated the National Hot Rod Association this season. He’s calm amid chaos.”
Trevor Snyder, a sophomore from Arizona studying business, said, “It would be sweet to have a racetrack again in Hawaii, especially if there was lots of community involvement. I heard there used to be a racetrack near Kapolei, but I don’t see that side of the island very much.” Snyder added he was in support of anything that resembled a “Fast and Furious vibe.”
Kayla Hinton, a junior from Canada studying elementary education, is unsure about whether she would ever make it out to see a race, were there a functioning racetrack. Hinton stated, “I’m not very into sports, period ... and if I were, it probably wouldn’t be drag racing.” However, she said she was in support of Okuhara’s efforts to bring back Hawaii Raceway Park and admires his initiative.