It depends on what your looking for. Just great sound or do you want to have a real surround sound. Sound bars can try to mimic a surround sound but it isn't a replacement for the real deal.

Do you have room for a proper rear speaker placement?  With a 5.1 system the surround speakers usually are slightly behind the seating area. With a 7.1 the surrounds are directly beside and the rear surrounds go behind the seating area.

A sound bar will give you good sound and with a sub you will get the full effect of the top fuel engines running. But for stuff like football games and concerts your surrounds have a lot of crowed noise. That way it feels like your there. I don't know how much of this you would hear watching drag racing.  If you play any type of Xbox or PlayStation then I would go with a real surround sound.

What kind of budget are you looking at?  While all inclusive Home Theaters in a Box can be good your going to have to drop a pretty good amount of cash in one spot to get a decent one. Your other option is to piece your own system together.

Start out with a Audio Video Receiver (AVR) and a pair of speakers.  Add the center channel or sub now or later on depending on your budget.  If you started out with book shelf speakers for the fronts you can move them to the surround position and get a pair of towers.

This is an excellent place to look at refurbished AVR's to save some coin.
http://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/category/avreceiver/home-audio/receivers-amps/home-theater-receivers/1.html

Bose makes a nice setup that comes with stands for the rear speakers. That's nice if you rent or don't want to mess with running the wires through the ceiling to mount them on the wall/ceiling.

A quality soundbar would accomplish that, but for the same or just a little more money the sound could be much better.



How far do you sit from the TV?



Get to a store and hear for yourself what's available.  In the mean time, check out Paradigm since they're made up your way (and offer a range of excellent products).





 

Ideally, a basic 5.1 system would be set up as pictured below.  As a general rule, your front left and right speakers would be approximately the same distance apart as the distance to your seating position.  So instead of being being 15 feat apart, the L/R speakers in a soundbar would be what, 3 or 4 feet, at most?  This is one of the reasons I think of them as being inferior to a normal surround setup. The further away you are, the more less-than-ideal they become.



If you do end up with a soundbar, at least try to get one with a decent external sub.  Low bass for the drag race does make a difference.