New England Dragway (Epping)
ActiveActive Still racing today.
New England's main drag strip, an NHRA quarter-mile in Epping that opened in 1966 and celebrated its 60th season in 2026. It hosts the NHRA New England Nationals plus Wednesday and Friday street nights and a long ET points season.
- Built by members of the New England Hot Rod Council, many of whom still own it
- Hosts the annual NHRA New England Nationals
- Concrete extended the full 1,320 feet in 2010
- Raced
- 1966-present
- State
- New Hampshire
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- September 11, 1966
- Sanction
- NHRA Division 1
- Track
- 1/4 mile
- Surface
- Concrete
- Address
- 280 Exeter Rd
Epping, NH 03042 - People
- New England Hot Rod Council, founders and builders (1963-66)
- Ed Bernier, treasurer, New England Dragway, Inc.
- Elevation
- 121 ft (37 m)
- Coordinates
- 43.02502, -71.02374
Big races
NHRA New England Nationals
NHRA Mission Foods Series stop that brings Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock to New England.
NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series divisional and Night of Fire
Sportsman divisional weekend paired with a Saturday night jet car and exhibition show.
Import Face-Off
Touring import drag racing and car show series that stops at Epping several times a year.
Jet Cars Under the Stars
Night show with jet cars plus Top Sportsman, Top Dragster and gambler racing.
Golden Era Classic and nostalgia Sundays
Nostalgia drags and car shows with East Coast gassers, flatheads and Pro Comp, including the Orientals Hot Rod Reunion and Camsnappers Old Fashioned Sunday.
History
The New England Hot Rod Council (NEHRC) started racing at the Sanford, Maine, airport in the mid-1950s. According to the track’s own history, members knew by the mid-’60s that they needed a permanent home, and in 1963 they started asking realtors on the New Hampshire seacoast for land about a mile long. Treasurer Ed Bernier recalled that most realtors laughed at the request. One, Ben D’Agostino, took them seriously and within weeks found a site, though it meant putting together two parcels in two neighboring towns, one owned by the Trefetherens and the other by a man living on an island off South Carolina. The council told him to go ahead.
The spot was close to Boston and other big eastern New England cities, on Route 27 near Route 95, which made for an easy haul for racers and a big pool of spectators. Epping and Brentwood both welcomed it. Heavy equipment moved thousands of yards of dirt to get ready for a September 1966 opening, while stockholders took apart used bleachers, hauled them to Epping and put them back up, built a tower, put up fencing and painted. The first race ran on September 11, 1966. On August 11, 1968, racer Bruce Cox was killed when his car left the track, flipped and hit a utility pole.
The track history says the strip is still owned by many of the racers who built it, plus newer shareholders, and calls it the only quarter-mile drag strip in New England. It runs four days a week from early April through late October, with everything from grudge racing to the annual NHRA New England Nationals. Its motto is “Built by racers for racers.” New grandstands have replaced many of the old bleachers, which came secondhand from a Massachusetts university, and a Bose sound system replaced the old PA. In 2010 the concrete pad was extended from 745 feet to the full 1,320 feet and given a finish to make the whole quarter mile smooth and fast.
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