BIR work starts Sunday

Dignitaries from the Iron Range, Brainerd lakes area and northern Minnesota will help Brainerd International Raceway officials Sunday begin construction on the quarter-mile drag strip, a $500,000 project that is expected to produce record speeds because of an innovative track design and the use of taconite tailings as an asphalt substrate.

Sen. Don Samuelson, DFL-Brainerd, Rep. Loren Solberg, DFL-Bovey, and Baxter mayor Gary Muehlhausen are among the dignitaries who will be on hand for the start of construction, which will begin about 5 p.m., immediately after Sunday's drag racing. A short ceremony and a few final runs down the track will take place before construction equipment will tear up a chunk of track, signaling the start of the two-month project.

The public is invited to the event. The entire day of racing is free to the public.

Also on hand Sunday will be BIR president Bill Singleterry, BIR general manager Scott Quick, project manager Ed Shaughnessy of Coleraine, who has 35 years of drag racing experience, and dozens of bracket racers who will be completing their season this weekend as they vie for the track championship.

The new track will be unlike any in the country because construction plans address some of the problems that plague most tracks, the most notable of which is the transition from concrete to asphalt.