Dude, where's my drag strip?

11/8/05

ver the past six years, the mythical "development" of a drag strip in Banning, CA, caused plenty of excitement among local drag racers. Then, over the following years, the doubts, accusations, questions, rumors, repeated opening dates and vague open-ended postponements, for real or fabricated reasons, piled on.

Earlier this year when I listened to the "promoters" of Drag City interviewed on Scott Hudson's SpeedScene show, under rational scrutiny it all seemed so totally unbelievable.  In a dream riff, the "promoters" spoke of diaper changing tables in every restroom, an all-concrete racing surface with concrete poured 200 feet past the finish line, and to offer a burger and a Coke for 3 bucks-- and they were allegedly talking with In-n-Out Burger!  There was so much fluff that building a new dragstrip seemed to be the last thing in the minds of the "promoters".  If you dream it hard enough, they will come.

Rather than actually starting construction or supporting the sport, it became more important for the "promoters" to herald "the first Professional Drag Strip to be built in Southern California in over 30 years" as a jab at existing, working strips where drag racing was regularly filling staging lanes and producing quick ET slips.  They also characterized most SoCal strips as "parking lot" strips to further trash competing venues.

Since the "development" at Banning was announced, SoCal has gained Irwindale Dragstrip, California Dragway, Barona Dragstrip and the Perris Speedway 1/8-mile strip.  Long before any earth gets turned at Drag City a new quarter-mile track will probably have been finished at California Speedway to replace the existing strip built in the front parking lot.  This will officially make the new California Dragway "the first Professional Drag Strip to be built in Southern California in over 30 years."

Ceremonial groundbreakings and trumpeted construction of "offsite improvements" to a small city street extension project had a lot of the remaining supporters revved-up, salivating and further hoodwinked again.

But finally and without fanfare NHRA upper management recently came to their senses by removing Drag City from the Division 7 Member Track roster.  As Graham Light told me in Vegas, "We wish them well and would re-visit the issue if the track gets completed." To my knowledge, no other un-built, paper track has ever gained NHRA Member Track status in the history of the organization.

Under their current announced schedule in a recent Riverside Press Enterprise article, once again the "promoter" has set yet another date to open the dragstrip "before the 2006 NHRA POWERade season begins." 

ADVERTISEMENT

Checking my calendar that means up and running by February 9, 2006, the first day of the Winternationals.

Along the way, the "promoters" also got sidetracked with a re-pop of the legendary Surfers car to capture the fancy of certain vintage drag racing groups in an effort to grab credibility.  With a chassis built by Pat Foster, they enlisted Tom Jobe and the late Mike Sorokin's son Adam to join the project.  Adam and Tom have since removed themselves from any involvement in the re-pop and without their participation this Surfers car will not be allowed into some vintage drag shows and cacklefests as they'd originally intended.  Without them it's not the Surfers car.