The When, Where and How of Drag Racing's Beginning

In a much more simpler time, the word "Drag" originated from the 15th century German word 'Tragen' then 'Trag' meaning draw, pull or carry and eventually changed to "Drag". Then in the 18th century, wagons or carts were dragged by horses or mules on streets and roads, which were dirt. A town or city's main street would be dragged to make it more easily passable than the adjacent streets, thus the "Main Drag". If a person thought his horse and cart could be pulled faster than another, they picked a time to race on the Main Drag and would be talked about as a "drag race". With the advent of the horseless carriage, if an owner of a vehicle thought his "car" (short for carriage) was faster than another, they would schedule a contest on the main drag, for a "Drag Race". Modern drag races involved acceleration from a standing position, giving the appearance that the cars are "dragging" against inertia giving strength to the term 'drag" in connection with such races.

It's been debated over the years when modern drag racing started - roughly starting in the early 1950′s with the advent of the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association). It's not simple and technically it's tough to pinpoint but essentially a few years after WWII would be accurate as far as 1/4 mile sanctioned drag racing goes (key word being sanctioned) - using airports and/or runways and access roads that were no longer needed for the war effort.

Actually modern drag racing's roots started in the 1930′s using dry lakes (salt lakes); typically found in the deserts of the Western U.S. Muroc Dry Lake in California (west end of the Mojave Desert), was one of the first of this kind. The SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) was established in 1947, to govern these "two-at-a-time" races. In 1949, Bonneville Salt Flats (in Utah) began having speed weeks and "timed runs".

A common theory about why drag racing grew so quickly was how soldiers coming back from the war, were looking for excitement and street racing, which evolved into drag strip racing, offered an exciting and competitive opportunity - legally - because racing on the street was obviously illegal & dangerous.

Around 1950, Santa Ana Drag Strip (yet another airstrip) was the first to have competitive sanctioned 1/4 mile races. The NHRA was founded in 1951 by Wally Parks to organize drag racing and the rest is history. With so many abandoned or unused air strips, drag racing then boomed across the country. Oh and yes, some say Goleta Ca. drag strip, near Santa Barbara, was first but we'll stick with the consensus because the race in Goleta wasn't technically sanctioned (in 1949) - they were many unsanctioned and at times illegal events in the early years. By the way, in a plug for my clan, one of the earliest racers at Santa Ana were Hank Bender and Ron Hier, who went on to be a successful Jr Fuel and Top Fuel team (Bender & Hier) from the 1950′s into the early 1960′s - and then again in the 1990's.

It should also be noted, another dynamic evolved in the early years of drag racing, which was manufacturers of auto parts, who found these races to be an excellent place to test their speed parts and therefore would "sponsor" racers (giving them parts for their racecars) to experiment and examine new and different ways to make auto parts better.

Drag racing's start is Americana and these early years of drag racing were the most amazing of times when ironically - as many of the era have told me - life stood still. Life was simpler then.