![]() 50-cents admission to spectators and participants alike, and the Santa Ana drags quickly gained a following. It was here that several drag-racing fundamentals were established. Racers were split into classes that depended on a car’s year, make, engine displacement and more. A computerized clock measured top speed at the end of the quarter-mile (high-tech stuff for the 1950s) and determined a winner.Įarly Santa Ana drags (source: Pinups & Kustoms Magazine) “Pappy” Hart (a Santa Ana, California-based gas station owner/mechanic) opens the first official organized drag racing event. Pappy used an auxiliary runway at Orange County Airport it was both closer and cleaner than the dry lakes. He charged. 1950: Now editor of HOT ROD Magazine, Parks discusses an alternative to the lakes racing that SoCal speedsters had enjoyed for decades, “controlled drag racing,” in the April 1950 issue. Shortly after, C.J.1949: Goleta, California saw a match race that some refer to as the first official drag race another is run at Mile Square airfield in Garden Grove. Soon, SCTA’s first “Speed Week” is held at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. This is the first instance of timed speed runs the stopwatch puts a premium on acceleration as well as top speed.To maximize revs, drivers might hold a car in gear longer, or “drag” through the gears. Which of these is correct? Maybe none, maybe all. Late 1940s: The idea of side-by-side racing becomes known as “drag racing” – the origin of the term is unclear. Popular theories: The only paved section in smaller towns was on the main drag. Racers may have goaded each other to drag their car out of the shop so they could race.HOT ROD Magazine launches. The name itself was provocative, suggesting a seedy if not downright criminal element-but the magazine’s longer-term goals were to mainstream the car-hop-up movement, and to make a shedload of cash in the process.1947: The Southern California Timing Association (SCTA) is formed, meant to organize this growing band of speed fiends. Wally Parks again helped create the group.1946: Restless young adrenaline junkies turn to hopping up cars speed contests and bad behavior spill onto the streets of America, giving the boys and their fenders jalopies something of a reputation. Where speed and testosterone is involved, competition will naturally ensue, and with the dry lakes far from civilization, thrifty tinkerers kept their exploits closer to home. Games included Chicken, where two opposing cars would accelerate toward each other to see who would spook first Crinkle-fender, where moving cars would hit each other without wrecking and Pedestrian Poker, where a driver tried to brush (but not actually hit) pedestrians. The public was getting fed up.1941-45: World War II gives a generation of American boys engineering know-how, thanks to the aircraft industry requiring ever-better planes for the war effort, and others a taste for speed and derring-do for the same reason. ![]() Parks starts the Road Runners Club in 1937.
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