NASCAR O’Reilly

Scott Woodruff doesn’t have a title at the nascent International Hot Rod Association but if you have to call him something, ‘Woody’ probably wouldn’t balk at ‘director of fun’ because that is generally what Darryl Cuttell has asked him to do.

For over two decades, he was the brand and media manager at JEGS Performance but he preferred the ‘make stuff happen guy’ title.  

Nevertheless, Cuttell has made quite the splash in the North American Motorsports scene over the past 13 months in acquiring the IHRA brand and then expanding it to nearly every facet of the industry with a dizzying number of acquisitions.

He has purchased nearly a dozen drag strips and began promoting an expanded national tour with larger payouts and increased fanfare. IHRA has acquired a powerboat racing series and launched a Late Model tour set to begin in April.

Read more: Everything you need to know about IHRA Stock Cars

As part of the latter, IHRA leased dormant Pulaski County Motorsports Park in Virgina and purchased Memphis International Speedway in Tennessee. Most recently, it acquired Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina, which brings it into NASCAR’s orbit as they will host a second-year Easter weekend event for the O’Reilly Auto Parts and Craftsman Truck Series.

In short, Woodruff says his job is ‘to make racing fun again’ across all the divisions and properties Cuttell has started to accumulate like Infinity Stones.

“For a lot of endeavors like this, funding is the big issue,” Woodruff told Motorsport.com on Thursday. “Funding is not our issue. It’s got to be the right people in the right place. Right now, we’re in the middle of a big two-day planning session and the questions we get to ask ourselves is ‘what would we want as fans,’ or ‘what would we want as competitors,’ or as partners.”

Funding, by the way, is not an issue because Cuttell is the CEO and president of Darana Hybrid — the electro-mechanical company most famous for doing contract work with xAI, SpaceX and Tesla.

His Stock Car Series race director, Tim Horton, said the acquisition spree is about Cuttell’s personal legacy.

“He’s purchased seven or eight drag strips now, repurposed them, and made deep investments into the infrastructure of the sport,” Horton said. “This is his passion. He views it as a chance to establish a legacy. He’s done really well with his business and this is his idea of fun. He owns several drag cars, power boats. He loves motorsport.”

So, Cuttell absolutely has deep pockets but there also is a natural skepticism that someone that has amassed such a fortune would want to spend it in an industry that doesn’t historically have a high return on investment.

That’s especially true of track ownership and operating regional touring divisions. As the old adage goes, to make a small fortune in motorsports, you have to begin with a large one and Cuttell certainly has the latter.

At face value, spending millions of dollars on nearly a dozen facilities and numerous touring divisions looks like a loss leader by definition.

“Yeah, it’s not a loss leader,” Woodruff said. “It’s an investment. That’s what it is. If you look back and you say, ‘here’s this guy spending in areas that no one really wants to spend on,’ facilities and infrastructure and purses, nobody wants to do that.

“We’ve got someone that sees the power in that, sees the number of tracks with pedigree and history, and they’re going away so let’s get back in and re-energize them.

“He says ‘let’s plug the battery back in and get it recharged.’ We’re building the infrastructure so we can go race. Let’s go exceed people’s expectations, whether it’s on the track or off the track, that’s what our goal is.”

At first, Woodruff was a skeptic too.

Even upon his introduction to Cuttell, he wanted to know what would happen if IHRA failed, just to know what the plan would be as a matter of due diligence.

“One of the questions I asked him, one of the first, was what is your exit strategy or what is your disaster plan,” Woodruff said. “He said, ‘I don’t have one,’ and I asked ‘what do you mean,’ and he said he doesn’t fail.

“So, I said, ‘alright, let’s do this,’ and here we are.”

Why acquire Rockingham?

“Our goal is to use each facility that we have in the best interest of the fans,” Woodruff said. “And obviously, Rockingham, we would love nothing more than to start this long-term partnership with NASCAR, starting this year.

“Our goal is to work together. That’s just how we operate.”

That also means working with Track Enterprises and Bob Sargent, event promoters of the NASCAR weekend, who were also trying to purchase the track from previous owner Dan Lovenheim at the same time.

Doesn’t that make the relationship kind of awkward?

“Well, my last meeting was with Bob and he just walked out of the door and seemed pretty happy,” Woodruff said.

For his part, over text, Sargent agreed with the positive sentiment.  

Memphis International Speedway has a NASCAR national touring history as well. It hosted what is now the O’Reilly Series from 1999 to 2009 and the Truck Series from 1998 to 2009.

Woodruff conceded that NASCAR’s recent post-trial restructuring and the holidays has delayed their initial conversations but he’s looking forward to getting to work with them in a variety of capacities.

“We probably haven’t been high up on their priority list this past month,” Woodruff said. “But I do know that we’ve got a group that is meeting with them in the next week or two.

How has IHRA decided what to acquire out of all the options out there?

“Each situation is different and has different pluses and minuses,” Woodruff said. “We look at it as a group and then we decide ‘okay, on a scale of 1-10, how much do we want do this? Is this facility nice or is it necessary? That’s another conversation too. We’re trying to be good stewards of the sport and some of these tracks, we could have walked away and not purchased them, but a lot of them are crown jewels that just need a little bit of love.”

A skepticism of Cuttell from those who have interacted with him over his first year as IHRA owner is that he is just a free-spender without a vision. Woodruff pushed back on that too.

“There is absolutely a vision,” Woodruff said. “When he first hired me, we were in a side-by-side at Milan Drag Strip and we pulled up next to this pond. Darryl says he wants to ‘get rid of these trees’ and ‘put down some parking spots.’ He says he wants to install plug-ins for motorhomes and water/sewage.

“He immediately told me how far he wanted it to go and painted this detailed picture. I tell you this because he has a vision.

“Last year was just very reactionary. We have these events, and they came up on us fast, but now we have a lot more time to have it planned out for 2026. I think that is going to be a huge benefit for everything we’re doing.”

Full circle, working for Cuttell doesn’t mean meeting a bottom line, either. So how is success defined by the new IHRA?

“By smiles and happy people,” Woodruff said. “Everyone on staff at an IHRA event is wearing a blue shirt. Their job is to be there to help and make sure that everyone is having a good time.

“If you walk up to someone in a blue shirt, they’re going to be able to answer your question and help you out. They are going to be taken care of the way they would want to be taken care of. I know it sounds pretty simple, but it is, it’s really that simple.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team