Craig Air Force Base (Selma)
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
Also known as Craig Dragway; Craig Time Trials
- Single-car time trials timed by a state trooper with a speed gun, set up to curb street racing by airmen
- Raced
- 1975
- State
- Alabama
- What's left
- You can still spot it in aerial photos, or broken pieces of the track surface remain.
- Raced on
- A military airfield
- First race
- January 11, 1975
- Surface
- Taxiway
- Location
- Unused taxiway on the flight line at Craig Air Force Base
- Elevation
- 158 ft (48 m)
- Coordinates
- 32.33913, -86.99293
The Craig Time Trials began on January 11, 1975, on an unused taxiway on the flight line of this Air Force training base. They ran that Saturday and the following two as a trial. The idea had been pitched to the base commander as a way to curb street racing among the airmen, who weren’t allowed to use the nearby drag strips because none were sanctioned by a national organization. Only one car ran at a time, and a state trooper timed it with a speed gun. It was informally known as the Craig Dragway. The hope was that the trials would earn permission for real drag races, but no further record has turned up, so that permission probably never came.
Background
Craig was an Air Force base outside Selma where new pilots went through undergraduate flight training. The Air Force shut it down in 1977, two years after the time trials, and the old base now operates as a civilian airport and industrial park called Craig Field.
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