Category 3 Hurricane Milton hit Florida last Wednesday, October 9. Freedom Factory racetrack owner and YouTuber Cleetus McFarland drove his Ford Raptor pickup truck to assess the damages, and what he found wasn’t pretty. The worst thing he saw was at the connecting Bradenton Motorsports Park, which had its huge stands hurled smack in the middle of the drag strip.
As soon as Cleetus entered the Freedom Factory gates, he saw moderate damage here and there, but nothing too bad. However, after glancing at the nearby Bradenton Motorsports Park and seeing the heavy, metallic stands thrown onto the middle of the drag strip, he immediately evaluated the damages at around $100,000.
By: Codrin Spiridon / Auto Evolution
Not only were the giant stands heavily damaged, but the sheer force of the impact also scratched the treated surface and tore out fist-sized concrete chunks. At least the scoreboards stayed up, but the power lines were hit, so there’s that.
Freedom Factory is just 0.6 miles or under a kilometer from the famous Bradenton Motorsports Park drag strip. It’s literally a 3-minute car ride or a 12-minute walk between the two connecting areas. In addition to Cleetus, other famous YouTubers, like Brooks Weisblat from DragTimes, also shoot many racing videos there.
After a complete tour inspecting the damages, at minute 15:51 from the video below, you can hear Cleetus say, “This is the best I’ve made out of a hurricane, period. And it’s the worst one we’ve ever had.” So it’s not all doom and gloom.
They had to cancel the weekend’s events, like Friday’s “Cleetus McFarland Driving Experience” and Saturday’s “Danger Ranger 9000,” and refunded the tickets. They still don’t have an exact rescheduled date at the time of writing, but they’re working on it.
Overall, it could have been a lot worse, judging from all the cars, tires, amenities, and everything else exposed to the elements from the Freedom Factory. After a complete on-the-scene assessment, Cleetus said the damages add up to around $120,000, including the torn-out stands.
Other places in Florida, like the Tropicana Field dome stadium in St. Petersburg, weren’t so lucky and felt the full force of the hurricane. The roof, mostly made of fabric, was torn to shreds, exposing everything inside the stadium to the severe weather. It will take weeks just to assess the full extent of the damages.
Sadly, this isn’t Bradenton Motorsports Park‘s first hurricane encounter. A little over two months ago, at the beginning of August, it was flooded by the Category 1 Hurricane Debby. Cleetus filmed the aftermath from a helicopter and captured some truly spectacular footage. The drag strip overflowed with at least 1-ft. or 30 cm of water at the starting line.
Category 3 Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday, October 9, at 8:30 PM or 20:00 EDT and hit Florida’s western coast near Tampa Bay. The sustained winds reached an incredible 120 miles or 193 kilometers per hour speeds. Reports say that by early Thursday, October 10, more than 3.3 million homes and businesses were left without power, not counting other damages.