{"id":22257,"date":"2025-05-14T21:36:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T03:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/aztec-speedway-season-on-pause-ahead-of-holiday-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:12:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:12:44","slug":"aztec-speedway-season-on-pause-ahead-of-holiday-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/aztec-speedway-season-on-pause-ahead-of-holiday-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Aztec Speedway season on pause ahead of holiday program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Alfred
Alfred Hicks (52) and Clayton Tillia (10) battle for the top spot in the Sport Compacts feature Saturday at Aztec Speedway. (RaNai Toler\/For the Tri-City Record)<\/span>RaNai Toler<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

AZTEC \u2013 The 2025 live dirt track racing season at Aztec Speedway appears to be paused, according to a post released last week on the track\u2019s social media page.<\/p>\n

According to the Aztec Speedway page on Facebook, the track\u2019s current season, which was slated to resume on Memorial Day weekend, \u201cThe Speedway is currently in a state of flux due to some unfortunate circumstances and we are doing everything that we can to try to salvage the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post went on to say, \u201cAt this time we are temporarily closed until further notice. Several promoters have reached out looking to help. Once more information is known we will post it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aztec Speedway opened its current season March 28 and 29 to a solid turnout for a weekend of racing titled \u201cThaw Brawl\u201d. Coming off a strong 2024 season which concluded last fall, the track was scheduled to host 18 live racing dates this season, scheduled to run through October according to track manager Julian Garcia.<\/p>\n

Aztec Speedway promoter Erick Garcia said this week the track will remain closed until either an agreement can be reached with current track management and the owners of the facility, Micon Land LLC, or until a new promoter is brought in.<\/p>\n

\u201cOperational stuff and a vision for the facility is really the difference,\u201d according to Erick Garcia. \u201cOnce we get some of that dispute settled, we may go back and operate it again. If not, they\u2019ll go out and get a new promoter to open it back up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aztec Speedway is housed on land owned by the state of New Mexico, which is on lease to Micon Land, LLC, which is owned by Jason Sandel who is also president of Aztec Well Services.<\/p>\n

Sandel took over day-to-day operations of Aztec Speedway more than 10 years ago, and his family have been involved with bringing in promoters and operators to the track from the time they came aboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we took over the lease, it was really a commitment to the community,\u201d Sandel said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been dedicated to continuing racing operations from the time we took over. It\u2019s really a labor of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandel suggested that because of concerns within the racing community in and around Aztec Speedway, the best course of action was to suspend operations for the time being.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went down a path last season and the management did right for the track, but this year as we became aware of these concerns, it was the smart and business-like thing to do to not move forward with any racing until those issues could be resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandel didn\u2019t go into specifics as to what the concerns may have been, but they were enough that he recognized as the person responsible for the lease and the operation of the track.<\/p>\n

Drivers, who of course are reliant on the speedway to race and who are the featured attractions when the gates are open, are also the ones who face the greatest impact with the pause in action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact with me is that I have sponsors from the area that expect me to be out there with my race car,\u201d said Regan Tafoya. \u201cThese are long term relationships with real good people. I have lots of friends and family that want to watch me race here locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

The track was in the early phase of its 73rd season of racing. Prior to the start of the season, the track\u2019s facilities saw a massive upgrade, which included improvements to grandstand seating areas, billboard signage as well as the track surface which included new clay overlays.<\/p>\n

The desire to move forward with the racing season as quickly as possible, is at the top of Sandel\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur interest is for the track to operate,\u201d Sandel said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a mainstay inside this community for longer than I\u2019ve been alive and we understand the importance of that. I think having someone who understands racing and promoting is essential in order to be operated in the proper way. We have goals and we don\u2019t have a defined pathway to accomplish those goals at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

pair of programs in March, slated to race Memorial Day weekend<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1240,2361,28,2362,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-aztec","tag-aztec-speedway","tag-headlines","tag-motor-racing","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77635,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257\/revisions\/77635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}