Clovis Air Force Base
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
- Admission at the first race was 25 cents
- Raced
- 1956
- State
- New Mexico
- What's left
- A good length of the old track surface is still there, in poor to good condition.
- On the site today
- Cannon Air Force Base
- Raced on
- A military airfield
- First race
- November 11, 1956
- Track
- 1/4 mile
- Surface
- Runway
- Location
- Inactive runway at Clovis Air Force Base
- People
- Sandblasters Car Club, organizer (1956)
- Elevation
- 4,299 ft (1,310 m)
- Coordinates
- 34.38839, -103.32757
The Sandblasters Car Club got approval to run quarter-mile drag races on an old, inactive runway at the base. The runway was 8,200 feet long and 150 feet wide with 3,500 feet of straightaway, and the pits measured 150 by 300 feet, the spectator area 200 by 1,500. The Automobile Timing Association of America sanctioned the races. At the first one, on November 11, 1956, several hundred spectators paid 25 cents to watch twenty-five cars race for eleven trophies, with the Sandblasters, Caesars, Lopers, Flamingos and Red Devils clubs taking part. A 12.5-second dragster from Amarillo was quickest. Races ran every two weeks after that. The base is now Cannon Air Force Base. A 1959 NHRA Division 4 guide listed it among inactive strips, so racing may have gone on past 1956.