Welcome to Quick Fill. 

With the banquets in the books, we finally close out the 2023 GNCC Racing season. After some of the tightest championship battles we’ve seen (at least on the bike side!) and a wide variety of conditions, albeit a bit more on the muddy side the 2023 season will go down in the books as one of the most exciting seasons in the history of GNCC. However, 2024 shows some serious promise as not only could it produce more of this tight racing, but the historical significance of the 2024 season itself is exciting. 

We trace the history of GNCC Racing back to the Blackwater 100 event, which began in 1975. That inaugural Blackwater in 75, along with a few more Blackwaters through the 70s, were standalone events before the 100-Miler Series took birth in 1980 eventually transforming into GNCC as we know it in 1986. Regardless, this whole thing began with that first Blackwater 100 in ’75, and this means that 2024 will mark the 50^th Anniversary of GNCC Racing. 

Now, you may say “hey, that’s only 49 years!” and technically you are correct, but when talking about racing events the first year is considered “inaugural” and the second year will be the “second annual”. Some people believe that you do an inaugural and a “first annual” but think about that for a second… When you get 49 years down the road by that math, you’ll have had 50 events (or seasons in our case) but you’re only counting 49? That just doesn’t add up, does it? So yes, 2024 is the 50^th anniversary season of GNCC Racing and we’re pretty excited for a great year of racing.

Last week we also announced the 2024 schedule. You can get all the info on the schedule page HERE and click through the individual events for more information. To give a run down here, we’ll kick off the season at Big Buck once again. We made this change several years ago and it has proven to be pretty popular as it gives people the opportunity to get out of the winter and do some racing without waiting until early March to go to Florida. We started out in Florida for many years but the Daytona Bike Week dates changed several years back, and while Palatka isn’t right by Daytona its actually pretty important for us to stay on-schedule with Bike Week when we race in Florida. This gives opportunities for a lot of people who may not get to any other GNCC event, both casual spectators and motorcycle industry personnel, a chance to come out to a GNCC event. 

So, after Big Buck we’ll head down to Florida for Wild Boar and from there it’s the traditional back-to-back with The General in Georgia. A lot of people are already aware but Aonia Pass, home of The General, took new ownership since we were there last. The new owners are motivated to make us feel as welcomed as possible and are working towards obtaining additional property for us to utilize. It may not be in the cards for 2024, but fingers crossed we can work onto some new property there in the future. 

Also of note on The General, most everyone is aware that this property was logged prior to our 2023 visit there, and Sunday’s race was a full-on mudder. Well, the track crew is making plans for a Georgia visit sometime in January to do some dozing and further clean up some of these areas. We’re going to work to make the existing trail system better and keep our fingers crossed to venture into some new stuff as well. I mentioned this when we raced there last that while logging property is never ideal, once we get a few years down the road this is almost like starting with a clean slate. The trees will grow back in a bit thicker than they were previously and will eventually feel like a brand-new place. Big Buck is a prime example of this as there are areas that have been logged there in the past, and you can’t tell these days. 

From The General we’ll head to Camp Coker which is a few weeks earlier than normal. We’ll keep our fingers crossed here as well for some warmer weather so everyone can enjoy the ponds like usual, but even in late March things begin to start warming up in this area of South Carolina. The series will then return to Tennessee for the first time since 2014 with an all-new event called The Old Gray in Monterey, Tennessee. This property is actually a concert venue owned by Chris Landers of the Magna1 Motorsports, now Landers Racing KTM but don’t expect those guys to have an advantage! They actually don’t do much riding on this property and there are very few existing trails. Additionally, to make this event work, Chris has partnered with his neighbor to have enough property for the event, so we’re going to end up with a new trail system that will ultimately be a bit on the old-school side. 

We’ll then be headed to Ironman Raceway for the Hoosier GNCC and our only repeat event of the year. We know not everyone is a fan of racing the same venues twice, so you may see this one change down the road but if there were ever a place to race twice, Ironman is a pretty good option as people really enjoy riding here regardless. This will then bring us to our second new event of the year, but its really more of a “new old” event as we’ll return to Powerline Park for the first time since 2018. They’ve hosted a few AWRCS races since we were last there (which they also had when we raced there before) but outside of that there has been virtually zero riding done on this property. Don’t expect the same Powerline Park we raced before, and don’t expect the same as the AWRCS either. 

From there we’ll return to Mason-Dixon, which has proven to be a pretty fun event in the spring. It was also fun when we raced there in the fall. This is just an all-around fun event and hopefully 2024 brings more of the same. Snowshoe will once again lead us into the summer break, as is tradition because usually when you’re done with Snowshoe you’re ready for a break anyway! 

The International Six Days Enduro changed dates for 2024 and will be ran in early October. The US has been successful in that event several times over the last decade, and we’ve always accommodated the ISDE dates, so the fall GNCC schedule will look a bit different. For the first time just about ever we’ll return on Labor Day weekend with the Buckwheat August 31-September 1^st. We know that might not be the most ideal date, but there’s a lot of events to work around and hopefully the elevation there will make things a little cooler. 

It’s then over to The Mountaineer in mid-September, and The John Penton in late September. When we had the double events at Penton, the fall Burr Oak event always seemed to be better, so lets keep our fingers crossed that it stays nice and dry there like the fall has been the last couple times we tried that. We’ll then end the 2024 season with the mack-daddy of them at, the Ironman on it’s traditional late October date. 

We’ll have lots of cool 50-year celebrations throughout 2024, so stay tuned for more information on that in the coming weeks. That’s going to do it for this week’s edition of Quick Fill. Enjoy your week and we’ll see you back here next week for one final pre-Christmas edition of Quick Fill.