My eight year old and I were driving down the road today and out of the clear blue he say's "Dad, I know why they call it drag racing" I say, "Whys that?", he says "It's because when they launch off the line they drag their weelie bars on the ground."............................. That got me to thinking, why is it called "drag racing". I never thought of it until my eight year old, who at the time was listening to the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean on his Ipod, had this thought pop up into to his little mind. So why is it called that so I can sat the boy down and tell him the real story of why it's called "drag racing" .
I suspect it might be due to the original places they raced. Airstrips may have had soemthign to do with it.
I would think that it came from the days of horses "dragging" loads on a skid for a measured distance. Think about it, two horses pulling similar loads on skids for a measured block or so. First one there wins.
Even the NHRA doesn't know the answer to this question.... http://www.nhra.com/content/about.asp?articleid=3263&zoneid=101 "Although the tire tracks of its history are clear, the origin of the term "drag racing" is not. The theories are almost as many and varied as the machines that have populated its ranks for five decades. Explanations range from a simple challenge ("Drag your car out of the garage and race me!") to geographical locale (the "main drag" was a city's main street, often the only one wide enough to accommodate two vehicles) to the mechanical (to "drag" the gears meant to hold the transmission in gear longer than normal)."
Alright dammit, I'll actually contribute... I've always been told it is because the races typically took place on the main "drag" in town. Now, I want to know why the main drag is called the main drag? I like the horse idea.
I don't know, but the ever since I mentioned I go drag racing to the non-car people at work, this is what they picture....
I believe I have an interview somewhere of Wally Parks on why they called it drag racing. If my memory is not complete faulty I thought I remember it referred to running it thru the gears (dragging it thru the gears as long as you could till you hit the optimum RPM and then hitting the next gear). One guy would challenge you and the response was lets "drag it out" until the term drag racing stuck. -Jim
First time I heard it was from "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, and he gave the same explination as the one jimdillon attributed to Wally Parks. When it comes to drag racing, I look at Big Daddy about the same as I do God and the Bible...Big Daddy said it, I believe it, that settles it!
It has to with racing in a straight line. The "main drag" comments were on the right track. Roads were built by using a big machine called a Drag Line. It's a type of steam shovel. It postions the bucket far behind it and "drags" the bucket back toward the machine. Streets were called "drags". They they organized street racing, to get it off the streets.
Correct,throughout the world where Americans worked or travelled in the 1880's the main street of a town was known the "drag". why,I don't know but i suspect it has a lot to do with timber felling and milling.. But as California seemed to have been inhabited by people who had travelled a fair bit( gold miners as an example) ,the parlance came with them and was in use until the 40's at least.So when guys stated lining each other up on the intersections of the 'Drag',it became known as Drag racing. If you read any really old western novels from the 1900's you often see references to the main street as a Drag.
I think I read in a Garlits book or article that he releated it to the horse racing term. It would make sense, in a late '40s era.
One thing for sure, it has NOTHING to do with dragging wheelie bars which were unheard of for years in drag racing.
I know that......................Geez. I told you that part of the story because it came from the mind of an eight year old listening to songs that most kids his age don't even know exist.
As a kid growing up, we would "Cruise the Drag" in Brockton, Ma. We would challenge others "cruising" to go to another part of town to race. We would sometimes end up on RT 24 and race from a rolling start for about a mile. It got pretty crazy sometimes. Oh how I miss the good old days when you could actually go onto a highway and have room to "open it up". Too many cars on the road to do that now.
And Phil Weiand (Just say WHY-AND) seconds this motion. He said the same thing in an interview on the Gathering Speed video.
When I first opened the Hotrodsonline.com website in 1993 I received a question about the origin of the name hotrod. I typed out the following and mailed it to myself and registered it, so I would have a record. Where did the name hotrod come from. When I was 13, I lived next door to a policeman in Dearborn Michigan. I asked him where the name came from. He said it was a police term, but it had it's origins in the early age of the firearm. When muskets were loaded and the powder was loaded with a ram rod. If the battle was fierce, the rod would become red hot to the touch. The person in battle was a hotrodder, a person fiercely in battle, or ready to do battle. As time went on and guns changed, it still was called a rod along with other names, but primarily called a rod. This is where the police part comes in. Police began to call the piece used in the commission of a crime, a hot rod. They also used the term Gat, which was short for Gatling gun, the first automatic weapon They also called the person using a gun in the commission of a crime, a hot rod. So it was a police terminology, or slang, for a hot gun or hot rod used quickly at the drop of a hat. Now, I always believed this, but it was years later that I found proof. I was watching an old movie made in the early forties, call "the devil hitches a ride", and in that movie a cop involved in a car chase, said over the radio that he was following a suspect and the guy was "packing a hot rod". There was the proof. So this is the most logical explanation that I have ever heard When I heard that cop yell into the police radio, He's carrying a hot rod, i knew that what my old policeman friend had said was true. So that i how I believe the name hotrod came about.
I always thought it was refered to like going to a dance. You either went "stag" or "drag" Drag meaning you had a date OR a partner. and considering that there are only two cars on the strip at a time I would consider that "drag" racing. That is what I have always thought it meant my whole life. Now that I've heared the other guesses I like mine best still.
When I was a young man we used to drive the main drag most every night from one end of town to the other. We would wait for the chicken shack to close and make the ower an offer on the un-sold fried-chicken. 3 TO 4 bucks go's a long way after the close sign lights up. Oh and you have to give the young-man riding shot-gun credit! How many of us that's been around for a while ask that question?
To some of us,the two fingered symbol means..'wanna race?' so how did this come about? During WW2 Englands Primeminister ,Sir Winston Churchill was a great cigar smoker,and would often be seen with a stogey and waving two fingers in a victory salute. As he was a hospitible sort of chap,he would like to share a brandy or three with visiting dignitaries. At Yalta,he met with Stalin and Roosevelt to discuss the war and form an aliance. While having an after conference drink with the Stalin and Roosevelt Churchill lit up and noticing the look on the other guys faces held up a cigar in two fingers and asked" Wanna Drag? " ....
The more I read the responses and the more I think about it, I really believe my answer is the correct one. Think about it. Although Wally Parks created the sport of drag racing he did not give it the name. Where did drag racing come from? It came from solo racing at Bonneville and the dry lakes. Once guys started racing each other they were no longer racing stag but drag. Ive tried to find the term on the Web Dictionary explaining my form of drag but its not there but Im sure everyone has heard the term going drag. Thats my story and Im sticking to it.
Its a term all the old street races used to get each other shammed into racing you. Why dont you drag that old P.O.S. to the line and race if you arent chicken
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