PRESIDIO — Last weekend, the Presidio International Dragstrip kicked off its 2023 season in high style with bracket racing, tailgating and lots of fun. Over 300 spectators watched Gabriel Brito take third place, Arturo Carrasco take second and repeat champ Albert Covos earn the top prize.
Champion Covos — part of the Sure Shot team — wasn’t humble about his win. “I’m used to it — it’s another trophy, it’s more money,” he said.
Jokes aside, his drag racing streak holds deep meaning. Three years ago — in the weeks after his father passed away — he worked through his grief while getting a car ready for the races. That was when he won for the first time. “I was stoked,” he said.
Behind the scenes, the dragstrip has been trying to achieve legal nonprofit status and to expand their track. At the end of February, the group also applied for funding through the Presidio Convention and Visitor Bureau for a new light tree — the computerized system that signals the drivers to start their engines.
The dragstrip’s current set-up has been in use since the first iteration of the drag races were held in 2013. The software has since gone out of date, and it’s difficult to get any pieces of the system repaired. “Every time it breaks, we have to send it off to California,” race organizer Alex Jimenez said. “They don’t have any spare parts for it. They keep telling us we need to upgrade.”
The Convention and Visitor Bureau approved their request for funding, but were ultimately unable to appropriate money from hotel occupancy tax (HOT) for the tree — by state law, the HOT tax collecting entity must own the property HOT taxes are being used to improve.
The land underneath the Presidio International Dragstrip is a part of the Presidio Industrial Park, owned by the Presidio Municipal Development District.
Convention and Visitors Bureau President Arian Velázquez-Ornelas said that she had consulted with PMDD leadership about a possible way forward — but that it was all still up in the air. “Both the city and the [Convention and Visitors Bureau] support the drag races, it’s just a matter of bureaucracy and where that money can be funneled,” she explained.
Jimenez was optimistic they’d be able to come up with another solution — but would like to see the new light tree sooner rather than later. At Saturday’s event, everything went smoothly — until the lights got stuck, and they had to call it quits for the night. “The racers were not happy,” he said.
Still, he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout — especially given that it was the night before Easter Sunday. “We thought everyone had left town, but we got a lot of new faces,” he said.
