Arizona Raceway/Speedworld Raceway Park (Wittman)

In June 1961, newspapers across the country announced plans for a million-dollar racing complex 22 miles northwest of Phoenix, with a drag strip, a one-mile paved oval and a 3-mile sports car road course. It would sit on 577 acres of leased land, 320 of them for the tracks and parking. Mel Larson was president of Arizona Raceway Company, Inc. Construction started in November 1962. Track designer Charles Moneypenny of Daytona Beach, who had designed Daytona International Speedway for Bill France, made the strip 80 feet wide and nearly a mile long.

The first race was on Sunday, January 6, 1963, and Performance Products’ A/FD took top eliminator at 8.51 and 179.64 mph. The new track was fast at the AHRA Winternationals on February 22-24, 1963. Bob Sullivan set a track record of 8.21 at 196.06 mph on opening day, and the next day Rod Stuckey drove Chris Karamesines’ “Chizler” to 7.81 at 214.78 mph, a world record he couldn’t back up to make official. Saturday night racing began on May 4, 1963. From 1964 to 1969 the track was called Sportsland Drag Strip and was NHRA-sanctioned. Whit Alger managed it in 1967, when races ran on the second and fourth Sundays. Hot Rod’s October 1969 issue listed Mel Larson’s Phoenix Dragway as an NHRA strip, racing every Sunday from October through April. Arizona Speedworld has been closed since 2011 because of a dispute between the operator and the state, which owns the land. Concrete barriers now run the length of the strip to stop illegal racing. When it closed it was active four days a week.