Ten months after it was folded into a U.S.-based ownership group, IHRA Australia and New Zealand is stepping back from the deal.
In a statement issued this month, IHRA Australia and New Zealand CEO Maurice Allen confirmed the organization has halted its move into the broader IHRA corporate structure, the clearest signal yet that the instability rattling the American IHRA is being felt on the other side of the world.
“One of those decisions has been to pause the transition of IHRA Australia and New Zealand into the new entity structure and as part of the broader IHRA Group,” said Allen.
In September 2025, IHRA Australia and New Zealand announced it had been purchased by U.S.-based Cuttell Motorsport, the same ownership group that has controlled the IHRA in the United States since late 2024. The plan at the time was full alignment: shared structures, shared processes, shared systems, one global IHRA.
“Whilst this is disappointing it will mean our IHRA Australia and New Zealand resources can focus on continuing to deliver outstanding tracks and events, as we have always done,” said Allen, who pointed to several new tracks committing to IHRA sanction and a run of successful events staged while the transition was underway.
Allen framed the decision as a global one rather than a local one, citing “the political and economic impacts that are occurring worldwide” and “significant decisions” being made across the IHRA Group.
He was careful to reassure Australian and New Zealand racers that nothing changes for them.
“In summary, this means there is no change to the IHRA Australia and New Zealand operations that have been in place for several years,” Allen said, adding that the door to future integration remains open. “This does not mean the future integration into the IHRA Group will not occur, but for now it is in everyone’s interests to pause the transition.”
Earlier the same month, on July 10, the IHRA in the United States announced it would not run the remaining events of its 2026 Outlaw Nitro Series, walking away from a national tour it had promoted aggressively only months earlier. IHRA President Dustin Farthing cast the cancellation as a course correction.
“Our roots started in drag racing,” Farthing said in that release. “The racers who fill the staging lanes every weekend are the foundation of IHRA. Our focus is on rebuilding from the ground up by investing in our member tracks, sportsman racing, and the grassroots racers who built this organization. We will not lower our event standards simply to say we completed a race.”
“This isn’t the end of national event drag racing, it’s a reset,” Farthing added.
The cancelled Nitro season landed on the heels of a long run of high-profile departures from the U.S. IHRA since Cuttell took ownership, a churn of executives and staff that has played out in public over the past year and a half.
For the tracks and racers in Australia and New Zealand, the practical takeaway is stability: the same operation, same events, and same people who have been running them for years. Whether the transition restarts remains to be seen.
This story was originally published on July 24, 2026. 
