Races were $0.50 and nearly 50 cars were competing every week – business was booming! Eventually the good times had to end and the airport's extension in 1959 ran the drag racers off their course. The cars were split up according to axle ratios, year, make, engine displacements, and safety equipment. He then was able to establish different classes of cars based upon their abilities in order to make races fair. He decided to use the Quarter-Mile based upon its accepted use in quarter horse racing. This way things could be measured and a real winner could be discovered. His first goal was to establish a distance for the cars to race. Hart became the sole owner of the strip within the first month of operation and he also ran a gas station in Santa Ana. Before the airport was known as John Wayne International, an unused runway was being used to hold drag races on Sundays during the 1950s. "Pappy" Hart and his colleague Creighton Hunter recognized that racing in the streets was dangerous and illegal, and wanted to legitimize the sport. Santa Ana, California would become the first place that a commercial drag strip would come to exist. We may never know the first time a sanctioned race was called a drag race, but all of these ideas are possibilities.
#Quarter mile drag strip near me drivers#
As the sport evolved and began taking place on sanctioned courses, some drivers would "drag" through the gears or hold the car in the same gear for a longer period of time. Paved roads were few and far between in the early days of motoring so the main "drag" or road through town could have been the setting for early races. One theory is that because these races stem from a challenge made from one party to another that the first racer may have said, "Drag your car out of the garage and race me!" Another idea seems more rooted in fact and based upon where the race would take place. To be honest, no one actually knows the real story of why they decided to call straight line speed races, drag races. These were just races, plain and simple – drag racing did not earn its name until sometime later. When the first track was created, the idea of what drag racing has become today did not exist. This first drag strip ran races until 1959 and by that time the NHRA had multiple national events taking place throughout the United States. As soon as people saw the opportunity to race in safer and well-timed events the sport of drag racing was truly born. Hart was able to open the first official drag strip for racing. Speed demons were able to break the 100mph barrier on the Muroc dry lake bed in California's Mojave Desert, but it was not until 1950 that a man by the name of C.J. A few fans of this growing competition began developing rules and regulations that have led to the NHRA or National Hot Rod Association that we know today. These non-sanctioned events were essentially illegal drag races that took place throughout the country. Dry lake beds and two lane strips of roadway became the first places to test your vehicle against another driver. Once cars were being used widely, it was only a matter of time before the human love of competition took over. Henry Ford introduced the automobile to the masses with his less expensive vehicles built on an assembly line.
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