The Angel Family, owners of Houston Raceway Park, never had a plan to exit from drag racing. But when an opportunity came along that was too good to resist, they had to act. 

"We found ourselves in a situation where we sat on a piece of real estate that was in an area that was growing in an industrial world," said Seth Angel, Vice President & General Manager at Houston Raceway Park Inc, On the Competition Plus POWER HOUR show. "We just found ourselves where we had to make a decision as a family, what's the next step for us.

"We decided, we've got three and a half decades, 35 years of the history of the sport under our belts, and we've accomplished so much and done so many things. While we didn't want to leave the sport, we just really found ourselves at a crossroads where we, as a family, had to make a decision on what was our next step. Ultimately we decided to sell that piece of real estate. And that's where we're at."

Katoen Natie, an Antwerp, Belgium-headquartered international logistics service provider and port operator, purchased the Houston Raceway Park property in 2019.

Angel hopes in 35 years of serving the drag racing community; his family has left a positive impact on the sport. 

"We think that we've done a lot of great things for the sport, been a lot of the great milestones and history of the sport that'll go down forever," Angel explained. "For us, this is one of those situations where we sold the real estate just because, for the family, it's just a better situation long term for us. We love the sport. We had great memories, and we had great relationships with everybody in the sport, from Wally Parks when we first started talking about running NHRA drag races in Houston, to the current leadership group, to the teams, the sponsors, to our fans. We don't want them to think that we abandoned them because it's certainly not what we did."

There's no doubt Houston Raceway Park served the car culture in the Houston area. 

"Our legacy business has been, and it has always been, getting street racers off the streets and putting them onto the racetrack into a safe and controlled environment," Angel said. "That's been our mission from day one, and it continues to be our mission today.

"Texas 2K for us is a streetcar-centric event that has literally exploded onto the scenes over the last, let's say, seven to eight years. And it has just transformed and created this new culture of car enthusiasts, not so much NHRA. Because when you think of NHRA, it's a very small piece of the drag racing world when you look at the big picture.

"When you look at drag racing in general, for me, at least from my seat and from what we see in Houston, there is a bigger piece of the pie of fans, and enthusiasts, and car culturists, that love these streetcar events, that when you see a car on the racetrack, that person relates to that car because you know why? Because they can buy that car. They can go buy it off the showroom floor."

This weekend's NHRA Springnationals will be the final event for the Camping World Drag Racing Series at Houston Raceway Park but will not be the final drag race as the facility has multiple events scheduled for the remainder of 2022 and into 2023.