Carlsbad Raceway

This NHRA-sanctioned track, seven miles east of Highway 101 on Palomar Airport Road, opened on November 15, 1964. Danny Ongais beat Dick Lechien for top fuel with a 7.62 at 200.00 mph, and he won so often that first year he became known as the “Terror of Carlsbad Raceway.” He set the track record of 209.78 mph in April 1965. J. S. “Sandy” Belond and Larry Grismer owned the track, and Jim Nelson managed the racing. The 1960s were Carlsbad’s best years, and major match races stopped in the early 1970s. The last drag race was on August 8, 2004, after forty years.

Don Prudhomme came to that last race. He said Carlsbad would never be forgotten, that racers had to go there, and that for drag racing and motocross fans it became a place in the mind as much as on a map. Getting there in the old days was a trek, he recalled, with I-5 unfinished and the track way out in the boonies. It was one of the first Southern California strips and a must-stop for big names, since it paid $500 show-up money for match races. Prudhomme raced Don Garlits and Tom McEwen there, and Ongais was the hometown star. In 2004 he found the strip unchanged, still a classic 1960s drag strip. That was part of why it died. The track never made the capital improvements needed as speeds rose. Prudhomme noted that safety wasn’t a priority back then, the cars were slower and the crowds smaller, and as the sport grew on all three counts, strips like Carlsbad were replaced. He remembered the end of the strip running up a hill into a dead end, and thought he’d run into it a couple of times. An industrial and business park now covers the site.