It’s a calm mid-week morning at Cecil County Dragway, but a buzz is building for this weekend’s 15th running of the Yellowbullet Nationals. Promoter Monty Mikho is on the property after having made the 10-hour trip to Rising Sun, Maryland, from his Michigan home along with his wife, Maria. Working with a tightknit team and track owner Jim Halsey and the Cecil County staff, Mikho is set to hold one of the most celebrated outlaw drag racing events of the year.
“Putting together any event of this caliber is a pretty huge undertaking,” Mikho admits. “This isn’t what I do for a living. This is kind of a side gig here for me. This ordeal obviously stemmed from the website [Yellowbullet.com]. This is our 15th year going right now. I get a lot of the credit for it, but there’s a ton of people [involved] – my wife, Maria; my brother, David; and we’ve got just a gang of people here. Jim Halsey, obviously, is a huge, huge part of this deal. It’s his track and we partner in this deal to make it a little easier on both of us to put this deal together.”
Cecil County Dragway has hosted every single Yellowbullet Nationals, but that wasn’t always the plan. Mikho originally reached out to his local track in Michigan about hosting his new event there, but they rejected his offer, claiming they didn’t need his event.
“Halsey had read that online and asked if I’d consider bringing it out to Cecil County,” Mikho remembers. “I said, ‘Absolutely. I’ve raced your track, Jim, and I’d love to bring it out there.’ Here we are 15 years later. On a handshake. We have no contract, nothing between us other than a handshake between two gentlemen that’ve put this whole deal together. We’ve never had an argument. You’d never see us arguing, financial-wise, rule-wise, about anything. We’ve just got a great dynamic working with each other. I would never, never even consider moving this event to somewhere else.”
Over the last 15 years, the Yellowbullet Nationals and Cecil County Dragway have both grown and evolved. They’ve also become synonymous with each other. Just as Mikho wouldn’t consider moving the race elsewhere, the racers and fans couldn’t imagine seeing the race take place anywhere else. Participants have come to expect a for racers, by racers mentality when they roll through the gates at Cecil County.
“The first few years, as I brought Yellowbullet to Cecil County, there were a lot of improvements that a lot of people thought the track would’ve needed, but Jim and I worked really closely with each other to try to achieve that to keep the event here,” Mikho says. “He would continuously keep making improvements to the track, which he has, year over year, and he’s making some sizable improvements in recent years. It’s been a process since day one between Jim Halsey and I to kind of really invest in this racetrack and make it better for the drag racers. We’re seeing tracks closing down on the East Coast, as well as nationally around the country. To see Cecil County continuing to thrive and invest into the track, it just makes my heart smile.”
On top of facility improvements, Mikho and Halsey have worked together to continue raising the payout bar each year. This year’s Pro Modified winner will walk away with $50,000, while the full lineup of additional classes will also compete for big money.
“As far as the payout, believe it or not, as the years have gone by, the sponsorship revenue keeps deteriorating for us, but we seem to manage to save costs on other things to try to bump up the payouts and keep the racers coming through,” Mikho says. “It’s pretty much a risk game at this point. It’s not like the heydays of Yellowbullet 1, 2, and 3 where we’re generating a sizable amount of sponsors to do this deal. We’re kind of hinging on a decent event to make it through.”
Pro Mod has become one of the core classes of the event, with some of the best outlaw eighth-mile Pro Mod teams making the trip to Maryland to compete for the prize money and bragging rights.
“Who doesn’t love that class? You’d have to be crazy as a drag race fan if you don’t love that class,” Mikho says.
Pro 275 will pay $20,000 to win, while Limited Drag Radial, Ultra Street, Top Sportsman, and 8.50 Index will all pay $10,000 to win. Warriors Outlaw, a popular regional class, will race for $5,000 to win, and Pro Dial and 10.00 Index will both get $2,500 to win.
“Pro 275 is just an amazing class running super crazy E.T.s on super small tires on cars that are pretty realistic looking,” Mikho says. “You’ve got Warriors here and that’s not probably something that a lot of people know, but these cars are running 4.10s-4.20s. These cars are cars that would win any car show on the planet. They’re just amazing looking cars going super fast. We have 8.50, which is a super competitive class. I think we usually get about 60 or 70 of those cars that come here to compete. It’s really tight. If you look at that 32-car ladder, it’s splitting hairs between No. 1 and 32. You’re on the edge of your seat watching those guys race too.”
Mikho says they’ve made changes to the class lineup over the years, and though some of those changes led to backlash online, he’s happy with the current offering of classes. It’s a good mix of big tires and small tires, heads-up racing and bracket racing.
“I like pretty cars, and I’m a drag racer at heart,” Mikho says. “I could watch bracket racing. I could watch every single class.”
The Yellowbullet Nationals, Aug. 30-Sept. 1, will include testing on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by two qualifying sessions on Friday. Racers will get one final qualifying session on Saturday before rolling into the first round of eliminations. Racing will continue on Sunday.
To keep up with the event, check out the Yellowbullet Nationals Facebook page.
This story was originally published on August 28, 2024. 
