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closeStaging: New strip almost ready as NHRA date nears
Christian Byrd named executive director and general manager
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2008
Christian Byrd showed the media around the zMAX Dragway @ Concord on Wednesday, and although the $60 million facility is being built by Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc., in a way Byrd was conducting tours of "his place."
Byrd this week was named executive director and general manager of the facility, which is only a few weeks from being opened to the public for the first time.
An open house event is being planned for the new drag strip across the highway from Lowe's Motor Speedway on Aug. 23. The dragway's first big event is the inaugural National Hot Rod Association's Carolina Nationals on Sept. 11-14.
"We're down to some of the little things now," Byrd said. "Paving and fencing, putting up signage and thinks like that."
Work on preparing the track for racing should begin in within two weeks.
Byrd is he son of Jeff Byrd, the president and general manager of Bristol Motor Speedway, an SMI facility that also has a drag strip. Christian Byrd was born in Winston-Salem and graduated in 2001 from East Tennessee State. He worked at the Bristol tack before moving to Charlotte to work in NASCAR's digital entertainment and marketing divisions, then went to work for GMR Marketing. He came to SMI in 2007 and worked as manager of business development until assuming his new role.
Matt Greci has been named as the manager of dragway operations. He will be responsible for scheduling and managing events at the strip.
Christian Byrd said he hopes to have one "major" event every month at new dragway in 2009, with smaller weekly events such as car shows and amateur street races on other dates as scheduling allows.
But first, he has to oversee the inaugural NHRA event in what will be the facility's true maiden voyage.
"As a company we've done this enough times to know it's critical to have people around who know how to fix things quickly," Byrd said, speaking of the inevitable challenges of a first event at a new facility.
"We're going to have a lot of people from our other tracks where we've had events, and they will be here to lean on. If we have a lot of them standing around with nothing to do, that will be a good problem to have."