Old Bridge Speedway

Saturday night drag races ran on the oval’s short front straight, a sixteenth of a mile, and often drew more than 100 racers. Art Grotyohann managed the drags. Racers remembered starting in the banked fourth turn, which made cars roll forward, so before line locks people took turns holding stick-shift cars by the fenders to keep them from rolling through the lights. A flagman sat on a perch above the right lane before the track had a tree, and the finish was down by the flag stand. One called it shotgun drag racing and said Old Bridge had starting lights before any other strip in the area. Winners picked up their time slips on the backstretch by the pit gate and lined up again in turns three and four. Another racer ran his new 1961 Ford Starliner 390 there a few times. He remembered renting a helmet for a couple of dollars and leaving his driver’s license as a deposit, having his girlfriend drive him after he lost his license to the Wall Township police, and how fast the turn came up after the finish line. A housing development went up on the site after the speedway closed.