Lubbock Dragway

History

J. H. Aufill built this strip for more than $250,000, seven miles east of Lubbock and two miles south of Idalou on FM 400. Once it was built he sold a one-third share each to Hoyt Starr and Dick Pollard, and Starr managed it the first year. After that season Aufill bought both shares back. The track opened on April 9, 1972, under NHRA sanction, racing on the first Sunday of each month. It had seats for 5,000, but 10,000 people came to the first race and thousands more gave up and turned back in the traffic jam. Raymond Beadle ran the fastest time, 205.48 MPH, in Prentiss Cunningham’s top fueler. The grand opening was an NHRA divisional points meet on May 6-7, 1972, and the owners were disappointed that only 6,000 people watched the finals. Larry LaDue set a track record of 6.98 seconds at 194.3 MPH but lost to Larry Brown, who won top fuel.

For 1973 Aufill’s son Jack, who had owned and promoted the seven-year-old Arena Park Raceway, took over as promoter, and racing went to twice a month. The track hosted another NHRA divisional points meet on April 28-29, 1973. A Lubbock Dragway also appeared in a 1968 list of 325 US drag strips in the Swedish magazine Start & Strip, and it isn’t known whether that strip had anything to do with this one. In 1983 Dennis Barnard owned the track, then called Lubbock International Dragway. In the 1990s it went by Idalou Motorsports Park.