OK, let’s make this point right now. We’re not patting ourselves on the back here. The sole purpose of this piece you’re about to read is simply to inform you of the effort it sometimes takes to give you top-shelf drag racing content.

If you were looking for NHRA Midwest Nationals stories and photos from St. Louis this past weekend and wondering why you couldn’t find them, there’s a one-word answer: 

Helene.

Simply, the Category 4 hurricane that barged in from the Gulf of Mexico late last week knocked us out of commission. CompetitionPlus.com is headquartered in Spartanburg, S.C., and the entire state suffered from Helene’s effects. On Sunday evening, the power-tracking site https://poweroutage.us/ showed that a full 25 percent of the state was without electricity. By 5 p.m. Monday, that percentage hadn’t changed. Yeah, it was that bad.

CP.com publisher Bobby Bennett Jr. had intended to be in Madison, Ill., to staff the Midwest Nationals, “but something told me to stay home,” he said. “I will say it was divine intervention.”

Even so, Bennett planned to compile and post a notebook on the first two days of the event. But at 5 a.m. Friday, power went out at Bennett’s home office. (It still hadn’t been restored as of this writing late Monday afternoon.) Helene was so large a storm that she dumped enough rain on the St. Louis area to cancel Friday’s racing.

Nicole Clark, CP.com’s new social media director was, however, on-site at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis and able to provide some info. The rest of the content had to be produced by folks scattered around the country.

 

 

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“I called in the one person I have always been able to count on when the chips are down, Susan Wade,” Bennett said. “Whether it’s been a death in the family, a heart attack, COVID or whatever, she's been there for me. I called her on her weekend off, and she jumped in and took control to make sure our readers were kept up to date on the race.”

Wade pulled out all the stops from her home in Arizona, orchestrating photography needs and providing “The Ten” notebook Sunday evening. Tracy Renck’s full-time job is Manager of Communications & Media for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, but he regularly files recaps from NHRA events for us, too. He was at home near Colorado Springs, Colo., ready to provide qualifying and race recaps from home once NHRA’s media department provided audio of the interviews with the top qualifiers and race winners. Once the photos had been shipped, Mike Burghardt jumped in to resize them for the most efficient uploading possible.

I was home in southeastern North Carolina, where we escaped the brunt of Helene’s wrath, taking the submissions from Wade and Renck and editing them for publication before handing them off to Bennett.

Meanwhile, back in Spartanburg, Bennett was without electricity or internet except for what was available with the latter via limited cell phone service. Ninety percent of the Spartanburg area was blacked out and residents who did venture out in search of a wifi connection did so at considerable risk. Intersections had stoplights that didn’t work, making travel a matter of life and death. “You’re dealing with folks who somehow got a driver’s license but forgot that intersections where the lights are out should be treated like a four-way stop” and not their personal dragstrip, Bennett said.

I had Susan and Tracy’s material in Bobby’s hands before I went to bed Sunday night. Not until Monday morning, though, could Bennett take the final step to get the coverage online. He left home with his laptop and sought out a place he knew he could hook up to wifi – a Starbucks. It wasn’t a perfect solution, given that communications services still weren’t up to speed: “The internet connection was like what we encountered in 1999,” he said.

But it worked. By early afternoon, he was able to download stories from Wade and Renck and a massive collection of photos, format all of it for publication, and eventually get it uploaded at https://competitionplus.com. 

A little more than a week earlier, there had been a press conference at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte to discuss Competition Plus’ contributions to drag racing journalism over the past quarter-century. Bennett was asked what was his proudest moment for the site, and responded that it was the press conference itself.

 

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His answer changed after Helene barreled through and he was finally able to update the website. Helene’s intrusion devastated scores of towns in the Appalachian region, left an estimated $34 billion in damages, and killed more than 100 people. Those figures will surely rise in the coming days.

I was the motorsports beat writer for – and later, sports editor of – The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. I knew Bobby for at least a couple of decades before I retired from the newspaper in May 2019 and went to work for him as a freelance contributor. Making this website the best it can be drives the man every day and night, and he barely slept this weekend worrying about both the safety of his family and how to provide the coverage you expect from NHRA events. (The former concern might have been the greater one, given the possibility that potential looters might have been emboldened by the fact that 9-1-1 was out of commission in Spartanburg County.)

But in spite of the obstacles, the job eventually got done. Bennett’s daughter Emily, who is the site’s Managing Editor, got a strong life lesson about the persistence of the site’s founder.

This site and its team faced a worst-case scenario this weekend. We were effectively, due to the damage in South Carolina, cut off from the modern world that expects instant entertainment. While we agonized over the delay in getting it to you, the bottom line is that we did the absolute best we could in a worst-case scenario.

“It's the team that makes this ship float, even in the turbulent waters of a hurricane,” Bennett said.

The effort involved this weekend reminded me of the name of the gym where I’ve trained for more than 11 years, DSDQ Fitness.

What’s DSDQ stand for?

Don’t Stop, Don’t Quit.

We won’t.

Take that, Helene.