As race time approached for Sunday’s grand reopening of West Virginia Motor Speedway, Cody Watson, the young promoter who had the vision to bring the Mineral Wells track back from the dead, glanced across the expansive grounds at the facility’s iconic terraced hillside seating area and almost couldn’t believe his eyes.

“I had just looked up there, so I started the drivers’ meeting with, ‘Guys, I want to thank you for coming tonight. We’ve got one helluva crowd over there to watch you,' " Watson recalled of the welcome speech he delivered to the entrants in the evening’s program.

Indeed, it was a massive spectator turnout for the show headlined by an $8,000-to-win Valvoline Iron-Man Northern Series event, the first competition at WVMS since 2013. While it can be tough to gauge how many fans are occupying the grassy terraces towering of the track’s homestretch — most people bring their own lawn chairs so they’re spaced farther apart than a typical grandstand — the hillside was awash with humanity and the concrete bleachers lining the backstretch held quite a few spectators as well. Watson estimated “there were probably over 5,000 people there,” which would rank as arguably one of the largest attendance figures for a Dirt Late Model event in the country so far this season.

“I assumed it was gonna go good,” Watson said of the opener, noting that pre-race buzz for the reopening among locals was high. “But I didn’t think it was gonna go that good.”

Watson, 31, had his first inkling that something special might be brewing on Sunday morning. He took notice of the early arrivals who flocked to the track to stake out their spots on the hillside.

“We allowed them to start putting their chairs up from 11 (a.m.) to 1 (p.m.), and about 10 o’clock, before we even really got started, people were starting to roll in,” Watson said. “Then literally I unlocked the gates for them to do it at like 11, and it was like a mad dash. I looked up at the hillside at like 11:30 and there were all kinds of chairs already up there.

“These were just the diehards who were really anxious, so I had a feeling the crowd was gonna be big. By 3 o’clock when the gates opened, you could see it was going to be real big.”

Watch the story behind the resurrection of West Virginia Motor Speedway.

Fans just kept coming in, leaving Watson awestruck at the first act of his dream to revitalize WVMS.

“You know, this was a Sunday work night. That’s one reason I was kind of surprised (at the turnout),” said Watson, who began the long process of cleaning up the overgrown WVMS property and rehabilitating its infrastructure with work crews last August. “I was expecting a good crowd, maybe like 2,500 to 3,000, but I was like, ‘Let’s get our feet wet, let’s get a race under our belt. This isn’t gonna be nothing too crazy. Let’s get this show in, get some money rolling in, get a base for the track, get some new staff members familiar with what we want to do as a team.’

“And it turned out to be a Hillbilly (100)-size crowd. It definitely overachieved of what I thought it would, but it was exciting and rewarding for me to see nine months of work culminate with a crowd like that. It kind of validated what we did. It’s kind of a, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ type of deal.

“I always had the feeling that if we made a nice place, people are gonna show up and support it,” he added. “Hopefully the cars will come in time, too.”

The car count, of course, didn’t match the attendance on the other side of the fence. Eighteen Super Late Models entered the Iron-Man card, and it was a top-heavy field at that with national names Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga. (the eventual winner of the dramatic 30-lap feature), Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio (the runner-up after being forced to pit because of a flat left-rear tire while leading) and Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas (the pacesetter until losing a left-rear wheel on the final circuit) leading the way. But Watson understood going into his new endeavor that drawing cars to run at the sprawling, 5/8-mile oval wasn’t going to be easy, and he acknowledged it’s one of the “things to work out” as he moves forward with his special-show schedule that features six more Super Late Model race dates.

“The crowd’s always been good at that place,” Watson said. “It’s just that car count (has lagged), and I knew that was gonna be an issue. That’s kind of one of the reasons it shut down. We just gotta figure that out, and the rest is just us trying to get the track good.

“If I know we’re gonna have good crowds like (Sunday), I think we can get pretty creative with stuff (to entice more participants at future events), pay out more start money to give back to the teams.”

For Watson, the opener was mostly about showing WVMS was back and the staff he’s assembled to assist him can handle operating such an expansive facility. He was successful on both counts, though he made it clear that there’s plenty of room for improvement starting with the track surface.

“We got a half-inch of rain on Saturday night so that didn’t help us any (with the track preparation),” Watson said. “We thought maybe the sun was gonna come out sooner (on Sunday), but it stayed pretty cool and overcast. I think the high (temperature on Sunday) was like 60, 61, so it wasn’t a very warm day, and it was mostly overcast so there wasn’t really any sun to dry (the surface) out either.

“But we got started right after 6, like 6:08 I think it was, and since we didn’t have a high car count we went ahead and ran two sets of hot laps because the track just needed a little bit to blow off that grease.”

Watson was happy to see the track end up “pretty racy” for the Iron-Man feature despite having “a little wave to it from being spongy,” but he acknowledged that the surface had “some rocks in it that we need to work on.” Those rocks likely contributed to the outbreak of flat tires that struck, most notably, Davenport and Moran, who rallied from their pit stops to battle for the win after Erb’s last-lap misfortune in what Watson called “an interesting, crazy finish.”

“From the drivers’ perspective, they were pretty good all around,” Watson said of the feedback on the track he received from competitors. “We had a few issues, but they’re gonna give us time to get through it. The place sat idle for eight years and they shortened it (cutting down turns three and four before the track closed in 2013), so not only did we have quite an undertaking in taking it back to the big track, they moved a lot of dirt, a lot of drainage, and they put some dirt in there with some rock in it so we’re paying for that.

“It really needed just raced on, the surface did, so we could get a good, solid base to it, and now we can go in with a grader and really get after it and roll it over. We’ve got a month till the next race (May 22’s Mountaineer Nationals that includes a $10,000-to-win FAST 410 Sprint Car Series feature and $1,000-to-win UMP modified A-main) to get some more rock out of it and sheep’s foot it back in real tight.

“The track’s fast,” he added. “We’re gonna work to make sure it’s smooth and wide so that it’s safe. We don’t want it to be so fast that it’s dangerous.”

Watson, who since 2013 has been part of the promotional team at his hometown Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va., but is promoting WVMS in a solo effort (though with assistance from the Minnite family that owns the property), spent most of Sunday’s action circulating through the pit and spectator areas with a notebook in hand to jot down items that will need further evaluation. Most notably, there’s no doubt Watson and Co. got an education on dealing with the type of large crowds that a massive racetrack like WVMS can draw.

“Logistics is the biggest thing at that place,” Watson said. “(Sunday) was like nothing we had done before (at Tyler County). We have quite a bit of experience running racetracks, but the place is just so big it’s a lot to handle. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of people who have gone to just about every race (at WVMS since its birth in 1985), and they said for a one-day attendance, it was the largest crowd that they’d ever seen.

“There were just so many people at once, and it just made the logistics of it tough. People trying to get in-and-out of the place, they were having trouble. One guy said he sat in line trying to get in for about an hour. Parking, because of the half inch of rain, got a little damp in some low-lying areas, so there was some frustration there. I think we could’ve got a little more food sold (in the concession stand) — we needed another register — but it wasn’t until the end of the night that we were running out (of food).

“For the most part, it went well,” he continued. “We just need to get a little more staff to handle those type of crowds, but it’s something we wouldn’t have been able to simulate. We just had to do this and learn from it. I think we’ll take care of some of that stuff.”

Watson is eyeing an even bigger turnout for his next Super Late Model event, the unsanctioned June 4-5 Historic 100 with a 40-lap, $10,000-to-win feature Friday and a 60-lap finale Saturday that offers a $25,000 first-place prize and a $5,000 bonus if the winner’s car is adorned with a throwback scheme. A purse of more than $125,000 has been posted for the weekend, which comes on dates that the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is idle and Watson envisions as having the feel of old Dirt Track World Championships and RaceFests held at the track.

“We’re really looking forward to that,” Watson said of the Historic 100. “I think the crowd is gonna be huge for that deal. The amount of advance tickets we’ve sold and just talking to people and getting their vibes for it … it sounds like they’re really fired up for that two-day deal and to come camp. There wasn’t that much camping there (on Sunday); I think there were three or four campers. A lot of (Sunday’s attendees) were just local people checking it out, so if we can get most of those people back and combine it with Late Model people from around the country, I think it could be a pretty big weekend.

“Hopefully we can build on what we did this weekend so that it was kind of a preview of what’s to come in June.”

Watson said the initial reviews and feedback he’s received from fans following the opener were generally “very complimentary.”

“Fans love what we’ve done, the look of it, the feel of it,” Watson said. “Naturally, the hillside’s still the charm of it, but people just love the improvements we’ve made.

“People, they were happy. I’ve got nothing but messages on my phone (since the event) about how appreciative they were, how the night went, how they had a great time, how some of them brought their kids for the first time like their dad brought them back in the day. It was just a pretty cool, surreal moment.

“It was either 6:15 or 6:30ish, I do remember (announcer) Dustin (Jarrett) pumped the crowd up and they all sounded … I was clear across the property trying to do some pit parking stuff and you could just hear them go crazy. It was an electric atmosphere for sure.”

With the initial trepidation of his big WVMS reopening gamble behind him, Watson is looking at what he hopes is a successful future.

“I was nervous to get one in, but excited to see that place do well again,” Watson said. “The fans have always been there, so I had that nervous excitement to see the place packed and to see race cars hit it again and to see guys like Jonathan, Tyler and Devin racing on it.

“So many people have stopped in there while we were doing the rebuilding and said how much they appreciated it, so I was kind of excited for those folks to be able to finally get to sit on the hillside and watch a race here again. It’s something that most of them thought they’d never see again, so it was exciting to bring it back.”

Ten things worth mentioning

1. Just a little observation I had while watching FloRacing’s live stream of Sunday’s program at WVMS that might not mean anything to anyone but me: I noticed that the high speeds achieved on the big track, in combination with the rooster tails of dust kicked up by cars, provided a pretty neat facsimile of a wind-tunnel effect. When a car drew close the rear end of another machine, the dust cloud the pursuer encountered was almost like a visual demonstration of how air sweeps over a Dirt Late Model.

2. Teenager Drake Troutman of Hyndman, Pa., who finished third in Sunday’s Iron-Man Series feature at WVMS, just might be one of the country’s busiest dirt-trackers so far this season. Sunday’s event was his 41st overall start of 2021, spread across three divisions (26 open-wheel modified, 12 Super Late Model and three Legends Car races) at 14 tracks in seven states. Troutman, who celebrates his 17th birthday May 16, has won in all three classes as well — five modified victories (he’s the points leader of the Renegades of Dirt Modifieds tour) and one each in the Super Late Model and Legends Car. His next action: this Friday’s Zimmer’s United Late Model Series North Region-sanctioned Billy Winn 85th Anniversary Classic at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway, where he’ll chase an $8,500 top prize at the track where he won Friday's first Super Late Model feature. He’ll also compete in the modified division.

3. In the wake of the hard April 9 World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series feature crash at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway that knocked his MB Customs car out of commission, Cade Dillard of Robeline, La., leaned on a good friend to help him bridge the gap until he has a new machine ready to go. Joel Couvillion of Alexandria, La., whose Joel’s Auto Sales is a primary backer of Dillard’s Shane Sprinkle-fielded operation, owns Dillard’s 2018 MB Customs car and loaned it back to Dillard and he drove it to a 13th-place finish in last Saturday’s WoO A-main at Richmond (Ky.) Raceway. Dillard said he plans to run this weekend’s WoO-sanctioned Hawkeye 100 at Boone (Iowa) Speedway in his MB Customs machine he drove to a runner-up finish in April 3’s Illini 100 finale at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway but will have Couvillion’s loaner along as his backup.

4. WoO rookie contender Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, missed his first tour event of 2021 on Saturday at Richmond, but it certainly wasn’t by choice. His Tri-Star Engines and Transmissions team’s hauler was felled by a broken fan blade on its engine while traveling through Illinois, leaving them stuck in the Land of Lincoln as the night’s racing went on hours away. The rig was towed back to the team’s shop; Gustin received WoO hardship points to soften the blow of his absence. Gustin will be back on the WoO trail this weekend at Boone and May 7-8 for the circuit’s rich doubleheader at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City, Wis., two tracks that should be right in his wheelhouse because they’re familiar to him from his open-wheel modified days.

5. I’m headed to Iowa this weekend to cover the Hawkeye 100, a race that I’ve been eagerly anticipating since it was first scheduled last year only to be snuffed out by the coronavirus pandemic. I’m really excited to check out the quarter-mile Boone Speedway, which is so well known as the site of the annual IMCA Super Nationals but hasn’t been a player on the Super Late Model scene. I especially want to see Boone’s ballyhooed track-reconditioning process that its prep crew employs throughout each race night to keep the surface racy.

6. ULMS founder and director Chris Zuver attended his tour’s show last Saturday night at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio, despite still ailing from the broken left arm and ribs he suffered April 24 when he was hit by a race car while on his four-wheeler during a practice day at McKean County Raceway in East Smethport, Pa. Zuver reported that he “didn’t do much” during the program — he joked that by the end of the program he was “using a cane to get around” — but his 18-year-old son, Trevor, assumed race-director duties for him and performed admirably in his debut in the role. Zuver proudly said that Sharon officials told him Trevor “did very well,” handling the job “beyond their expectations.”

7. Zuver did receive some bad news about his injuries on Tuesday when he visited his orthopedist for a checkup on his broken arm. The doctor said the bones are not fusing together properly, so he'll require a May 3 surgery to promote healing.

8. The driver-crew chief brother combo of Devin and Wylie Moran became uncles — and their Hall of Fame father Donnie a grandad — Saturday morning when their sibling Tristin’s wife, Abby, delivered Everly Mae, a 7 pound, 1 ounce girl. There’s no doubt the little one was born into a racing family because Tristin tweeted a photo of Everly in his arms Sunday as he watched Devin racing in the live stream of West Virginia Motor Speedway’s action. What’s more, Tristin reported that May 29’s Iron-Man-sanctioned Jim Dunn Memorial at the Moran family’s Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio — where Tristin now serves as promoter — will likely be Everly’s first race.

9. Speaking of Muskingum County’s Jim Dunn Memorial, the $10,000-to-win race is currently on Devin Moran’s schedule. If he holds to that plan, it would mean Moran won’t enter the Lucas Oil Series-sanctioned Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., which is also scheduled for that same Memorial Day weekend — and thus Moran won’t follow the entire Lucas Oil slate. Moran is currently fourth in the national tour’s points standings and is planning to run this weekend’s Lucas Oil doubleheader in Kentucky at Junction City’s Ponderosa Speedway and Union’s Florence Speedway, but on the dates of the next Lucas Oil shows — May 14-15 at 411 Motor Speedway in Seymour, Tenn., and Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala. — his schedule now shows a trip to Illinois for MARS-sanctioned races at Farmer City Raceway and Fairbury Speedway.

10. One more observation from the past weekend: I checked out coverage of the World of Outlaws Sprint Car and Super DIRTcar Series big-block modified doubleheader at the dirt-covered Bristol Motor Speedway, which mirrored Bristol’s recent WoO Late Model-DIRTcar modified twinbill in that Friday’s program was completed as scheduled but Saturday’s show was postponed by rain to Sunday afternoon. One thing I noticed that wasn’t the same about the two events: while there were at least six significant Late Model crashes on the fast, high-banked track (four during Thursday’s open practice, two during Friday’s feature), there wasn’t a single accident during the sprint car and big-block competition that left a car with serious damage.