When businessman/racer Billy Meyer unveiled the Motorplex in the summer of 1986, he pulled the curtain back on what drag racing would look like from that weekend to the present. The Texas Motorplex was to drag racing what the Elvis was to white rockabilly show business. It was instantly imitated. Within just a half decade, imitations (and good imitators at that) like Heartland Park Topeka, Bandimere Speedway, Virginia Motorsports Park, Houston Raceway Park, and others dotted the main event landscape.

The three-story half-hexagonal tower and sponsor suites behind the starting line, the passage way from the pits under the tower to the water box area, totally paved pro and alcohol pits and concession areas—everything about the plant shouted “first class.” But there was more to it than that … the racing surface was all concrete, the first major facility to ever go that route. That concrete and the resultant performance forced the hand of every major, hell make that plain old "every" track owner to include concrete in its track’s diet. Very few if any went all-concrete, but the extension or addition of concrete launch pads struck the budgets of track owners like AIDS in Laguna Beach.

And for a performance junkie like me that concrete track meant silver dollars from heaven. I believe the first event at the Motorplex was a match race show highlighted by an Eddie Hill versus Dan Pastorini best of three. Going into this race, the best three Top Fuel elapsed times were Don Garlits’ 5.37 at the ’86 Bakersfield, and two 5.39s by Gary Beck at Fremont and Orange County. When the day was done, Hill had clocked a 5.39, a run that if it did nothing at all, showed Meyer made the right move with concrete. The inaugural NHRA Chief Nationals set for that October had everyone chomping at the bit to what they would see.

In the annals of drag racing, no track roared to life like the Motorplex did while hosting the Chiefs. On the very FIRST pass of Top Fuel qualifying Thursday afternoon, Darrell Gwynn smashed the existent Top Fuel best ET (a 5.34) with a 5.28: No one event at a brand new track previously had delivered low ET of the world on its first shot.

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Kenny Bernstein’s “Budweiser King” Ford and “Doc” Halladay’s “Telstar” Arrow were the first pair of Funny Cars out on the pad that Thursday and Bernstein ran the lowest Funny Car to date with a 5.42 and Halladay hit a career best 5.59. Bernstein’s run was doubly remarkable in that it was the first 5.4-second shot by a “flopper.” (Bernstein had run a 5.50 at the U.S. Nationals a month earlier.)

When the race ended, Gwynn had set both ends of the national record with an aggregate 5.26, 278.55 and Bernstein, although unable to back up the 5.42, did back up a later 5.54 for the record. Oddly enough, the Pro Stocks didn’t even come close to the performance of their nitro cousins because at the end of the year, no Motorplex times made the top 10 of the 1986 season. In coming years, the records fell like dominoes.

MOTORPLEX FIRSTS

1.) In 1987, Darrell Gwynn ran the first 5.1-second Top Fuel run with a 5.17 at the Winston All-Star race.