NHRA Drag racing’s heritage began on dry lake beds in the Mojave Desert. Dragsters had been gathering there since the early 1930’s. The first recorded speeds of the hot-rods barely reached 100 miles per hour. Historians say the true birth of drag racing was with the birth of Wally Parks in 1913. Fast forward nearly four decades later, and Wally Parks became the founder of the NHRA. The NHRA is drag racing’s most successful sanctioning body.
Wally Parks’ family relocated to California in the early 1920’s. It was in the Golden State that Parks sparked his early interest in cars. He was present at his first dry lake dragster events in the 1930’s. As a result, this overwhelming experience sparked his fascination for racing. By 1937, Parks became one of the co-founders of the Road Runners Club.
Wally Parks served in the army in the South Pacific in World War II. Later he became tank test-driver for General Motors. Furthermore, he assisted in organizing the Southern California Timing Association. A few years later he would become it’s general manager.
The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was the site of the first addition of the Southern California Timing Association’s Speed Week in 1949. Wally Parks, then its executive secretary, had a huge hand in making it possible. It was at the Salt Flats that national speedsters began running against a time clock.
The Santa Ana Drags became the first drag strip in America. Racers began competing on an airfield in Southern California in 1950. The events gained popularity quickly among the dry bed desert racing crowd. The computerized speed clocks were a big reason that fans were attracted to the venue.
Wally Parks became the editor of the famed Hot Rod magazine. With that lofty position, he had the forum and the influence to form the National Hot Rod Association in 1951. Parks was also determined to create to order out of chaos. He achieved this by instituting safety rules and performance standards. The move also helped legitimize the sport of drag racing in the United States. Wally Parks soon became it’s first sitting president.
The first official NHRA drag race took place in April of 1953. It went down on at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds parking lot in Pomona, California. Fast forward 40 years later, and the track has had a $6,000,000 million dollar upgrade. To this day, it hosts the NHRA season-opening Circle K NHRA Winter Nationals. It also is home Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals. The Automobile Club Finals are the season finale in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series.
The upgrading of local drag-strips to stadium quality soon followed. They were equipped with fan amenities, VIP towers, and tall grandstands. This was the true passion of NHRA President Dallas Gardner. Gardner took over as president of the NHRA in 1984, when Parks became it’s chairman.
Tom Compton took over as the NHRA’s third president in 2000. Dallas Gardner received the chairman position. Wally Parks moved into the role as chairman of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. Peter Clifford, a lifelong executive with the NHRA, was anointed the company’s fourth president in 2015.
Wally Parks passed away at the age of 94 in 2007. He initially started NHRA to allow drag racers to compete on strips instead of the streets. The NHRA has since morphed into the largest promoter of professional drag racing in the world.
Diversity has become what the NHRA is all about. Furthermore, it has more than 20 categories of competition. Some of these include Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle racing at the professional level. the Mello Yellow Drag Racing Series is filled with an abundance of colorful, high-octane personalities as it’s world champions.
For instance, in 2015 Courtney Force captured the 100th win by a female in the NHRA professional categories. Top Fuel veteran Antron Brown won a world championship in 2012. He became the first African American driver to win a major auto racing title in America.
The NHRA received the Diversity in Motorsports Award winner at the 12th annual Urban Wheel Awards in 2008. The event took place at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The NHRA claimed the award thanks to the success of Hispanic driver Tony Pedregon. Pedregon had just claimed his second Funny Car world championship title in 2007.
