Darana Motorsports Holdings, LLC is asking for sealed bids by 5 p.m. Central on Nov. 17 for Heartland Motorsports Park, a 622.96-acre race park and industrial tract in Topeka, Kansas, according to the auction firm Tranzon. Heartland is one of 12 motorsports properties Tranzon has listed with the same deadline across eight states, including Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, and Rockingham Speedway in Marston, North Carolina. The Heartland page names Darana Motorsports Holdings as the party bringing the property to auction. The other pages do not name a seller in the descriptions Backfire News read. Backfire News reported on July 31 that nobody had filed paperwork to sell Heartland. A listing with a bid deadline, a deposit requirement and a 30-day closing changes that. By Backfire News’s earlier reporting, IHRA bought Heartland on Dec. 30, 2025, and bought Atlanta Dragway in February 2026. Both are now being offered less than a year after they changed hands. What bidders are signing up for The terms on the Heartland, Milan, Xenia, Benson, Empire and West Salem pages read the same: a 10% buyer’s premium on the high bid, a 10% deposit of the total sale price in guaranteed funds, a 30-day closing, and a sale in “as-is, where-is” condition with no contingencies. On a hypothetical $5 million high bid, Backfire News’s arithmetic comes to a $500,000 premium, a $5.5 million purchase price and a $550,000 deposit, assuming the premium counts toward the total sale price, which the pages do not spell out. Each page also says 2% of the high bid goes to a registered buyer’s agent at settlement. The format is “bid your price.” Bids are sealed, there is no auction floor, and none of the pages Backfire News read lists a minimum. Each listing says the property is subject to sale before the auction without notice, that pre-auction offers are welcome, and that Tranzon can withdraw or modify a listing at any time. Nov. 17 is the latest date a track could sell, not a promise that it will sell then. With no contingencies, a winning bidder cannot back out over a title problem, a zoning surprise or a track surface that needs replacing. The disclaimer on every page puts inspection and verification on the bidder. Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia, in 2019. The Tranzon listing offers 343 acres. Photo: Thomson200 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) Some of these are race tracks and some are building sites The listings sell the properties in two different ways, and the zoning explains the split. Empire Dragway in Leicester, New York, is pitched as a working drag strip on 272 acres with R-C Recreational-Commercial zoning that, per the listing, expressly permits drag strips and motorized racing tracks. Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio, is presented as an operating venue with a 2017 renovation and an IHRA-sanctioned schedule. Heartland is different. The listing says the entire 622.96 acres is zoned I-1 Light Industrial and splits it into 29 tracts: 334.16 acres of race park and 288.80 acres of undeveloped land that it says could suit distribution, logistics or light manufacturing. Tranzon says the property can be acquired as a whole or in components, which means a buyer could take the land and leave the grandstands. The Memphis International Speedway listing, in Millington, Tennessee, calls the 342 acres “partially demoed” and cites a conceptual plan for large-scale logistics development next to an airport and a rail line. Atlanta Dragway is zoned C-2 General Commercial, which the listing says allows a range of uses including continued motorsports operations subject to applicable requirements, and it sits near Tanger Outlets, Walmart and The Home Depot. Zoning, more than the racing history, decides whether a drag strip stays a drag strip after a sale. A buyer who wants to keep racing has to read the zoning code for the parcel before bidding, because the sale terms leave no room to find out afterward, and a buyer who wants a warehouse site is reading the same code for the opposite reason. The 12 listings What the listings leave out The pages Backfire News read give no asking price, no revenue or attendance figures, and no reason for the sale. They do not say whether a track’s IHRA sanction transfers to a buyer, though several describe the track as IHRA-sanctioned or IHRA-affiliated. The Atlanta and Xenia pages advertise “Clear Title – No Back Taxes – No Liens.” The pages for the other tracks Backfire News opened do not make that statement either way, and a title search would be the way to find out. No document Backfire News has seen connects the auction to IHRA’s other troubles, and Backfire News has not seen a statement from Darana or IHRA explaining it. The surrounding record is public, though. IHRA canceled the rest of its 2026 nitro season in July, and Backfire News reported that division directors were removed later that month. On Aug. 4, x.AI LLC and two affiliates sued Darana Hybrid Inc., IHRA owner Darryl Cuttell and others in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, case 2:26-cv-02994, alleging overbilling on data-center work and seeking more than $500 million. The complaint is an allegation, and Backfire News’s last report said the defendants had not yet answered. Cuttell has separately claimed in mechanic’s liens that he is owed about $570 million, and racers and vendors told Backfire News they were still unpaid for a June event at Darana Raceway. What happens next Bids close Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. Central, and the terms call for a 30-day closing, so deeds would be recorded in mid-December at the earliest. County deed records will show who bought what and for how much, and which of the 12 sold early. A racer with a points season at one of these tracks has nothing in the listings that promises the gates stay open under a new owner. If a historic drag strip sells at auction, should the new owner be free to pave it over for warehouses, or should the community get a chance to keep it a racetrack?
