Quesnel Drag Strips
Nothing leftNothing left No longer racing, and nothing of the track remains.
- Races drew 2,000 to 3,000 spectators on a strip of old highway
- Raced
- 1967-76
- Province
- British Columbia
- What's left
- The site was never redeveloped, but every trace of the strip has been removed.
- Raced on
- A public road
- First race
- 1967
- Last race
- 1976
- Track
- 1/4 mile
- Location
- North Star Road in Quesnel (1967-71); old side road beside a gas pumping station at Australian, 20 miles south (1973-76)
- People
- Colin Ketchum, race organizer (1973-76)
- Central Interior Timed Racing Association, race organizer (1973-76)
- Elevation
- 1,644 ft (501 m)
- Coordinates
- 52.98276, -122.46958
Drag racing in Quesnel had two homes in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1967 to 1971, with RCMP support, quarter-mile races ran on North Star Road in town. A former announcer remembered that racers had to stand on the brakes past the finish for a hard right into a big subdivision. From 1973 to 1976 the quarter-mile racing moved 20 miles south of town to an old side road next to a natural gas pumping station at Australian, again with RCMP support and led by Colin Ketchum. There, the announcer said, you pumped the brakes for a 45-degree turn into gravel, then slowed down before shooting out onto the main highway. Races drew 50 to 80 cars and 2,000 to 3,000 spectators. The strip was little more than a straight piece of old highway, and Ketchum said that after four years the cars had gotten too big for it. Only four people, who made up the Central Interior Timed Racing Association, could regularly be counted on to run the races. They had about $6,000 in timing equipment bought in 1973, possibly the same equipment used when the Prince George strip opened in 1978.
