The next couple of years were a building time for us. Big changes were about to come to the Memphis Area in outdoor karting. Until then, you only had a few places to run and no where were the places devoted to full enjoyment, with as many whistles and bells as possible. Indoor plumbing; a simple enough thought to think about but to have it at an outdoor race track was unheard of. And at Atoka, we had to have the worst porta-potty’s in existence. And one we had was located by the fence between the grandstand and the grid area…what was we thinking???
But even the dreams of indoor plumbing, had to come AFTER making the track a place where the racers would look at it in a different way and all of a sudden, oh wow, what a place to race on!!! The Hay Bales had to go, no questions asked. They were the main cause of wrecks on the track and the main cause of foolish mistakes made by the drivers themselves. 
Jason and I had talked about a rail system we had seen elsewhere that we both believed the idea would work, actually in reality we were scared as hell about the whole thing, but in theory, it had to work. The outside rails went up first. And they would remain the one major improvement throughout the 2001 season. The provided a new place for a fence that was out of harms way and would create a new instructional direction to our drivers, get smart quick, or you’ll take your ride home in a box. Sure there was contact that first year and some karts got damaged, but at no time were there the accidents caused by the hay bales. 
As a staff member, when the year started, I will admit we all were wondering if what we had just done would take the track to another level or turn it back into just an open memory of a gravel pit of the 1970′s. But we noticed one thing, the drivers learned quickly to give respect to the boundaries they were supposed to drive. Before now they made a few extra inches work or not for them by smashing a hay bale, now, there were definite limits to the edge you could drive on. And those limits were not to be overshot by hope and or despair. And at the end of the season 2001, we had a growing group of drivers who were coming of age and becoming really awesome mechanics of a new surface with its own new boundaries and rules.
The big changes came at the end of 2001, over the winter of 2002. New facility buildings shot up and so did the wonders of modern living…INDOOR PLUMBING!!! We were so impressed with the guard rails on the outside of the track we did the unthinkable. We did something that brought us more grief that we have ever been involved with, more criticism, more outright anger, and more unjustified name calling. We went the final step in the rails, we installed them on the INSIDE boundary on the track. How dare we do such a thing? All of a sudden the rumor was that we had been stupid enough to ignore all rules of karting safety, and placed steel railing on the inside on the racing surface, a move that would surely end the tracks existence and kill or injure countless racers. 
Then talk was propagated by a few locals who jabbered on over at Bob’s 4-cycle dot com. And now we were national talk on the web, an dour dangerous rails were topic number one. Out of the many who blasted us for the move, only a very few had supported us, mainly because they too were scared of those rails. The accusations were mainly unjustified and false as they had been started by a disgruntled racer who had seen an early released photo of the rails being installed and they were not at the correct height yet. But the damage was done. Racers were generally worried about them and I don’t blame them at all. I mean if the whole of the dirt karting region had said they looked dangerous, Id feel the same way too.
We also had begun building the new scoring tower but this season would not see it in operation as of yet. We would still be sight scoring, and I would sit on top of a half built structure announcing the most dangerous of place to race in the southern United States due to those awful inside rails.
The first two races came and went and I guess what had pissed me off the most was some of my closest friends refused to get on the track. Instead they sat in the stands to watch the horror as blood splattered as driver after driver came to his or her eventual demise cause we had no clue to what we had done by installing those dangerous inside rails. Karts hit the track and within just a few moments one thing was certain. Drivers of all ages quickly learned there was no longer any cones, or muddy berms for them to cross over to gain maybe an inch or two over fellow competitors. And just as the outside rails had given them their outside boundaries as to the limits of the racing surface, all of a sudden they had yet another place they could not drive, and thus the inside rails were giving them the inside limits and all again, of a sudden, the drivers had a race track to race on, a definite width, and a definite shape, with a lot of room to negotiate and race. And the words “Smart Racer”, were born. Gone were the day of the run what ya brung crowd and that mindset being ran on the track. Gone were the running over cones to advance yourself illegally. Gone was shoving your competitor to the infield. And you know what. It took maybe two races for those doubters to walk away shaking their head because there was no blood, there was no wrecks, there was some contact but 90% of the result of the contact was just a bouncing off square with and never to an extent of major damage to the kart or the railing. 
In fact to this day the most contact we ever deal with is the outside railing; not the inside. And not one person ever got on Bob’s site and said they were sorry for jumping to erroneous conclusions, mainly because they were not sorry. The majority of those who slammed us so hard were beginning to realize we had produced an awesome addition to the track and all of a sudden you had better step up your driving or you could not race with the regulars anymore. We had become a very dedicated group of race teams and some of the smartest drivers ANYWHERE. The numbers were showing it, on and away from the track. Other tracks were seeing all of a sudden the talent roll in when Atoka racers went elsewhere to race. We were a force to be dealt with. The rails had a big part in it and we had yet one more step that would put the icing on the cake we were serving the competition.
At the end of the 2002 season came another huge improvement, most of the critical areas in the pits were now asphalt, a huge section of them, the grid, the return road, and the scale area. The only time you had to be on dirt was when your kart hit the tracks surface, and this too was improving as Jason was really getting the hang of track preparation and we also had discovered how to sweep the rocks off the surface and now we had the prime surface we were seeking.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Below are small images of more of this topics available images. You can click on them for a larger view and hit your back button to get back here!!
– 
– 
– 
– 
