first race

what was your first race you ever went to? drag or round track, I'm a drag race nut, my first race i went to was to see Jack Chrismans white 64 comet at atlanta speed shop drag strip. I was 14, I was hooked long before then, reading hotrod, and a neighbor that subscribed to drag news, and i got all the old editions. seeing it first hand, the sounds, smell of nitro, just welded it in my brain for good.

 

My uncle Wayne used to take us to the jalopy races in southern Wisconsin, back in the 50's. Man I loved those cars. When I was 16, I got my Mom to sign for me so I could race my own. My first car was a 53 Studebaker coupe. 6 cylinder flathead engine that smoked like a ******. They ran me off the track on the first lap. Man that thing was slow. Went to 55 Fords and Chevys after that. It got better then. Those were good times and I miss them.
Tom

 

Super Modifieds on a dirt track. Went with my buddy and his parents when I was 11 or 12. I think it was Hagerstown Speedway, but I do remember listening to the Christine soundtrack all the way down and all the way back. Every time I hear "Boney Maroney", I cringe a little.

 

The very first drag race I ever saw was a street race. I was in about the 12th grade and there were rumors all day that at a certain hour two local cars were going to line up in front of the school and have it out. Around that time all the guys were constantly getting up to sharpen pencils so we could look out the window and we were sitting on all of our books to make us tall enough to peer over the window sill.

At the appointed hour we heard the rumble of two cars outside and every guy in the cl*** ran to the window at the same time. I remember the teacher hitting her desk with a pointer and yelling to get back in our seats but no one budged.

The cars were a full fendered, chopped and channeled 34 Ford pickup with an Olds engine and the other car was a 55 Chevy with a 409/409 4 speed in it. The guy with the 55 was known to brag that he had only $400 in the car because he had stolen a brand new Impala off the lot and stripped it for the drivetrain. (I heard years later he was found shot dead in the trunk of a car........wonder why ? )

Anyway, they took off and the 55 beat the 34, but not by much, and we all returned to our seats, but the room was in such an uproar the teacher still had trouble getting control back.

Don

 

first races I attended would have been "grudge night" at Fremont drag strip. every wednesday in the mid/late 70's.

grew up in Fremont, but for some reason never went to anything at Fremont Drag Strip other than wednesday nights and later the Nostalgia drags. man I would love to go back in time. I would have rode my bike out there when I was a kid. that was the good old days where a kid would leave the house on a saturday morning and not come home til dinnertime and no one had to worry about him/me because the world hadn't turned to **** yet.

 

Lions, 1965. Saw dragsters, altered's (including the Winged Express), and a match race between the Stone-Woods-Cook AA/GS and Hugh Tucker's AA/SR. Haven't been right since.

 

SCCA road course race at Lime Rock Park.

 

In the 50's we had a 5/8 dirt track at our local fairgrounds, watched lots of flatheads and chev 6's go at it. The original sign hangs on my shop wall.

 

First drag strip race was L***iter Mountain Alabama 1956.. First round track race that I can rember was 1950 at the Fairgrounds race track in Birmingham Alabama. My cousin and I built our first round track car for the jalopy races at the Dixie Speedway in Midfield Alabama in 1959. The car was a 39 Ford standard coupe. 59ab .080 over 400 jr cam. 378 rear milled heads and chopped flywheel. We purchased the car with all the speed work done. The previous owner got drafted and his mother sold us the car that he was driving to work. we then made a race car out of it. Now 53 years later I still have 4 active round track cars{ open wheel modified. and a 2.2 dodge powered rear wheel drive mini stock, camero super stock, and a sportsman 71 cuda 440 power, and I will add a vintage flathead 34 ford and 2 drag cars. I guess I will always be broke... Bobby..

 

The first race I remember was a midget race at Gilmore Stadium in 1948. I was a little over 3 years old, and spent the evening on Mom's lap. I don't remember much about the racing, but I sure remember the beautiful push trucks. In those days the push truck owners all tried to out do each other to win the weekly best appearing push truck award. The Chevy and Ford 1/2 ton trucks were painted like show cars, and were beautiful under the stadium lights.

 

I remember my first race. It was at Lanham Speedway in what is now and has been for 45 years a housing development. Being a kid my favorite driver was PeeWee. It was painted above the drivers door on his 40ish Ford coupe. One of the cars lost a wheel going down the back stretch and due to the banking it almost made a complete lap by itself.

 

First race I saw I would have been about 12, gr*** track quarter mile oval racing in the UK. They borrowed a farmers field marked out a 1/4 mile oval with hay bales put up a fence to keep peple about ten yards back and raced. The car i loved was in the specials cl***, a morris mini pickup with a aluminium rover/buick 215 mated to a transaxle mounted in the pickup bed. Useless on the corners but it would kick out rooster tails of dirt fifty yards long on the short straights.

 

Lets see born in June and on the salt for speedweek of the same year, but I really don't remember.

First race that really sticks in my mind was when a fella named McDougal went though the cyclone fence and strained himself on the mile flat track in San Jose. But that was Motor Cycle racing so its a little off topic for this thread.

We didn't go to roundy round car races, any number of other venues. But what I remember mostly were drag races on tracks and abandoned air strips around the bay area. I was going to races from what I have been told before I can remember.

 

Went with my buddies older brother to the old downhill dragstrip in Hallsville, Texas about 1960-61. Rode in a '55 Ford belonging to a friend of his with a tri-carbed 312. Car was fast but no match for the real g***ers he had to run against...he ran 14s and they ran 12s. Some 348 3x2 cars were fastest stockers, they ran low 14s high 13s. I remember the 390s and 389s tri power cars there, too, but the Chevies were quicker that day!! Etched in memory forever!!

 

First ones were the drags at our local track, held Sunday mornings. I was 13-14, and used to ride my bicycle to them. So quiet in town, that I could hear them in the distance on my way there. First "big-time" were the Popular Hot Rodding Chamionships held at US 131 in Martin MI. My parents brought me down for the weekend, and got a ride to the track with the older guys my parents knew. The guys were 19-20, all kids of my parents friends. Lots of big names used to race there in the seventies.

 

My first race was at Islip Speedway (Long Island, NY) in 1966 or so. My neighbor used to get discount tickets somewhere and he'd take his son and me & my brothers along. I recall the figure-8 cars and a big demo derby, but that's about it.

Bob