126 wins. Six championships. A last name that became inseparable from a stretch of New Jersey clay. Few families can claim that kind of grip on a racetrack, and Mandee Pauch Mahaney knows it. In a video about New Egypt Speedway, she explained what the place has meant to her family, saying it “holds a huge part of our lives.” The reason she chose to speak now says a lot about what was at stake.
“For many families, but mine in particular, the Paunch family, this place holds a huge part of our lives. My dad, Billy Pauch Senior, he’s got well over 120 wins at this track, six track championships.” Mandee explained in her video on Dirt Track Untold on YouTube.
Paunch Senior last won a modified track championship in 2013, which was his sixth championship. He was exceptionally successful from 1999-2002, winning three in that time.
“He’s the winningest driver in the track history here. My brother, he has, I think, over 40 wins. He has two track championships, and he’s ranked third in the wins overall here.”
Her brother, Billy Pauch Jr., has also won at the track and claimed a Modified title there in 2017. For this family, New Egypt was where the Pauch name was established, and it was never just another stop on the schedule.
The speedway’s story stretches well beyond one family. It opened in 1946 as a quarter-mile dirt track and was paved in the 1960s. Over the years, it ran under several names, including Fort Dix Speedway and Central Jersey Speedway. After years of neglect, the Grosso family rescued it in 1997 and reopened it as a dirt track in 1998.
Bill Miscoski and Fred Vahlsing bought it in 2006, and it was later widened into its final 7/16-mile, D-shaped clay oval. That layout drew dirt Modifieds, sprint cars and touring series such as the World of Outlaws.
The speedway was still attracting major touring series during its final active season. On October 10, 2025, the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Cars returned to New Egypt for the first time since 2017. Carson Macedo claimed the $12,000 victory, giving the venue another major night of national-level dirt racing.
The event highlighted the kind of competition the track could bring to New Jersey and why its future mattered beyond the families who had built their own records on its clay as well as the wider NASCAR and dirt racing community.
Confirmed sale raises Auto Club Speedway comparisons
In December 2025, Vahlsing announced that the main oval would not operate in 2026 and said he was open to a buyer or another operator. The property was listed on February 4 at $8.5 million as a turnkey motorsports facility.
It was later relisted at $12.5 million as a 45-acre, light-industrial-zoned site. The marketing pointed to data centers, technology users, light manufacturing, and strong existing power capacity.
In August, Vahlsing told Area Auto Racing News, “New Egypt Speedway is done.” He said two companies wanted the land for something other than racing. He declined to name a buyer or a price, and the report noted the sale appeared to still be pending.
He added that he had tried to sell it as a racetrack, even at a reduced price, but the $8.5 million ask put off interested racing businessmen. The loss of income from trailer storage on part of the property hurt too, and he described the operation as never profitable.
A land-preservation effort with Ocean County also fell through after expressing interest to preserve it as an active speedway. According to Vahlsing, the county would only take the land if the speedway were torn down. There will be no farewell event. Only the Quarter Midget program on the inner track will continue through the end of the season.
The comparison to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, is hard to ignore. The two-mile oval hosted its final NASCAR Cup Series race on February 26, 2023, the Pala Casino 400.
NASCAR then sold 433 of the roughly 522 acres for the Speedway Commerce Center, a large logistics development. It kept about 90 acres for a proposed half-mile short track, but that project has since stalled.
The two venues are very different. Auto Club was a NASCAR-owned superspeedway, while New Egypt was a family-scale dirt oval. The outcome follows the same pattern, though. Land that suits industrial use can outweigh its value as a place to race.
New Egypt is also not the only Garden State facility under pressure. Atco Dragway closed abruptly in July 2023 after 63 years. Raceway Park in Englishtown stopped drag racing in 2018 and has been eyed in township plans for roughly 600 housing units. Vahlsing himself warned that a track like New Egypt is unlikely ever to be built again in New Jersey.
For the Pauch family, the loss goes beyond real estate. Tracks like New Egypt give drivers a place to build careers, give families a shared tradition and give communities a Saturday-night gathering spot. The Pauchs’ victories remain in the record books, but the oval where they won them is not expected to race again.