Bowling Green, Kentucky's Beech Bend Raceway is no stranger to wild events throughout the season. Besides Holley events like LS Fest East, Ford Fest, MoParty and others, there are a wide array of events to check out, from the local racing scene nights and test-and-tune events to NHRA ET series events, car shows like the Danchuk Tri-Five Nationals, and more. Which is why the Street Car Takeover event makes for a solid fit at Beech Bend...roll racing, drag racing, drifting, and more are served up on the menu and anyone can line up for this buffet. Justin Keith and Chase Lautenbach have been running Street Car Takeover for the last several years and have gone out of their way to foster an all-inclusive kind of race series. That means that you shouldn't be too surprised when a built-to-the-hilt Lamborghini pairs off with a hot-rodded Terminator Mustang, or when a Chevy Cobalt SS stays right next to a fourth-gen F-body, or when a 350Z, a BMW, and a Corvette go chasing after Miatas on the drift course.

Friday night kicked off with an open test-and-tune session and the Small Tire Shootout to whet the palate. Saturday, though, is when everything was going on. As the drifters wore in their groove in Beech Bend's oval track area, roll racers lined up two-by-two and were hand-started off to a 40 MPH roll before the drivers hit the hammer and let their cars eat. The racing was great in all of the classes, but the King of the Bakery class, which is for roll racers with no top speed breakout, was especially interesting, with Jeremy Ortiz's turbocharged Nissan looking almost out of place in the final round. King of the Bakery is a no-joke class...this is the haunt of boosted Nissan GT-Rs, silly fast Lamborghinis, and the like. But there he was, fresh from putting a Huracán out of competition, lined up against Ryan Kerr's Audi R8. Ortiz was fast, but Kerr's Audi dug in like a startled jaguar the moment his car crossed the start flag and was gone in a flash. Once the roll racing wrapped up in the mid-afternoon, racing switched over to traditional drag racing and excitement kept ratcheting up. Eyes were on Joel Steele's Ford Mustang, which had taken the Coyote Mustang H-Pattern Stick Shift record with a 7.223 at 200.02 MPH blast on Friday night. But the Mustang was toned down to let the chassis catch up with the power, meaning that in the final round against a fourth-gen Trans Am, Steele only clocked a 7.48 at 190.3 MPH run to take the win.

The next Street Car Takeover event will happen at Maryland International Raceway on August 14th, 2021. Be sure to check out www.streetcar-takeover.com for more information!