To answer your question: no, drag racing isn’t illegal
Stefanie Kennedy
Editorial intern
It’s hard to say exactly when drag racing started. Some say it started post-World War II in California’s Mojave Desert, some say earlier. Maybe it all started with a taunting rev of an engine, a cocky smile; maybe some boasting took place, and then BAM!—the first drag race was born.
Whether or not it was legal is another thing. It wasn’t. Can you imagine speeding down a wide open road (usually a main street), trying to beat your challenger to the finishing point? What a rush! Just ask Jason Tessier, an avid, legal, hobby racer: “You know, just to go test your car with the stuff that you might have modified by yourself, or [your friends]. It’s just the adrenaline rush. It’s absolutely incredible.”
The race is signaled by an electronic device nicknamed the “Christmas Tree”, on each side of the tree are lights. The lights will change depending on where the car is and indicate where it is on the track, and when the racer can start the race. Racers can be disqualified for various reasons including; leaving the starting line too soon, or failing a post-run inspection. In the legal version, the racers are monitored for elapsed time and speed; the competition is essentially a time trial. In the illegal type, people and racers just want to see who’s the fastest and who wins.
The news media is laden with reports about how some drunken teens thought it was a great idea to race each other down a deserted road, only to end up killing an innocent person, or wrapping their car around a tree. These incidents may be prevented by more accessible tracks.
“Sometimes I used to drive over three hours to get to [a track],” says Tessier. “As opposed to if you live in the area it’s gonna take you 15 minutes to get to the track, instead of three hours. So, if there was [a track] closer, absolutely I’d think [drunken mistakes] would be cut down tremendously.”
However, if you want to put the credit of starting legitimate drag racing on someone, put it on Wallace “Wally” Parks.
Born in Goltry, Oklahoma in 1913, Wally attended his first dry lake speed testing in the 1930s and from then on was hooked to street/drag racing, eventually leading him to help found the Road Runners Club in 1937. In 1951, Wally founded the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), standing today as the largest authorized motorsports association in the world, celebrating its 60th anniversary this season, with more than 35,000 licensed racers.
The NHRA’s first official race was on a piece of the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds parking lot in Pomona, California, now annually hosting the NHRA season-opening and season finale. In 1955, the NHRA hosted the Nationals, their first national event in Great Bend, Kansas. The event jumped around from city to city until eventually settling in Indianapolis.
For drivers like Tessier, who has been racing for six years, the concept of professional racing is something different; “I would love to do it professionally, just in terms of the whole money aspect, it does get very expensive depending on how far you want to take it. It’s more so just a hobby.”
Whether it’s a hobby, it seems pretty important to those who take a deep interest in the motorsport that you participate in a safe way.
“I guess there always will be a negative view regardless if they have tracks set up for it or not. But I don’t think it’ll ever get around as having a bad reputation per say. I guess there always will be someone trying to do it on the streets, it’ll just be cut down tremendously if there were more tracks available for kids to go to.”
