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“PRI has all forms of Motorsports, but drag racing is a large part of it. In the last few years we’ve been promoting drag racing heavily internationally. It’s always been popular in Australia and Sweden, but it’s growing elsewhere as well. There’s a large presence internationally here. Drag racers everywhere want to go fast and the PRI show is the biggest trade show in the world for them and they go there to buy.”

Hence, the popularity of drag racing is growing world-wide – and that growth places the drag racing industry in a position to flourish as American manufacturers sell product to customers from all over the world. “The PRI Show is an excellent forum for us to get to drag racers,” said Scott Weney of S&W Race Cars. “It’s a diverse show and very good for the drag race crowd. Every year, the show seems to have gotten better for us. We’re finding more and more drag racing customers here every year. As the U.S. dollar gets weaker, foreign currency gets stronger and the international buyer finds it more affordable to buy direct from the people that created drag racing here in the U.S.”

While the sport has long been wildly popular in Australia and Sweden, new state-of-the-art drag racing facilities have recently gone up in Bahrain, Qatar, New Zealand and Canada. Of course, as the sport grows world-wide international technology also will continue to grow and be available to more teams and programs not only internationally, but here in the U.S., allowing smaller operations access to the information that was previously limited to the larger teams that developed their own proprietary advancements.

“We’re at PRI to exhibit and sell our products,” said Michael Konstandinou, of the Australian-based ICE Ignition. “Drag racing, along with circle track, is our biggest market – and we don’t even have a drag strip in our capitol city of Melbourne, so we have an international clientele and PRI is the show to go to.”

Then again, it should be no surprise that drag racing would play such a prominent role at the world’s biggest performance trade show. “Drag racing will always play a major role at the PRI Trade Show,” said Steve Lewis, show producer. “It’s the industry that spawned the first performance parts and after-market shows going back to the days when racers would take their street car to the local drag strip on Friday and Saturday night. And not only is the passion of drag racers is still going strong today, but it’s going world-wide.”

Expect that international growth to continue this year as the 24th Annual PRI Trade Show, which will run December 1st - 3rd, 2011 in Orlando, is expected to attract 40,000 attendees from 65 different countries to see the latest product lines from 1,100 manufacturers of racing and high-performance automotive components, as well as precision machining equipment.