Sanford Drag Strip
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
- Ronnie Sox raced Super Stock here in 1961, reaching 107.34 mph
- Grady Brummitt and Larry Brown set a class record, possibly national, in a 1961 Ford Starliner
- Raced
- 1957, 1961-1980s
- State
- North Carolina
- What's left
- A good length of the old track surface is still there, in poor to good condition.
- First race
- summer 1957
- Location
- Sanford
- People
- William R. Sloan, filed incorporation papers (1965)
- Sanction
- NHRA
- Elevation
- 309 ft (94 m)
- Coordinates
- 35.55899, -79.19537
A drag strip opened in Sanford sometime in the summer of 1957, before mid-August. The track was NHRA sanctioned. On February 26, 1961, Grady Brummitt and Larry Brown set a class track record, and possibly a national record, at 105.88 mph in a 1961 Ford Starliner. Ronnie Sox won Super Stock on March 5, 1961, at 104.62 mph, and was up to 107.34 mph by April 8. Sox had been driving Jack Strader’s cars but switched to his own, and Ronnie Butler took over Strader’s Pontiac. On June 18, 1961, Butler beat Sox with 107.14 mph. One fan remembered seeing Sox there as a teenager, driving a 409 Chevy, and treating him as a hero. Another, working in North Carolina in 1961, went on many Sundays and saw Sox in what he thought was a ‘61 Impala 409. He recalled the day’s big event as a match race between a Pontiac, a Chevy and a ‘60 Ford, all in SS class except the Ford, which ran a four-speed even though Ford didn’t have a factory four-speed until ‘62. William R. Sloan filed incorporation papers for Sanford Drag Strip on March 10, 1965. The track’s full years of operation still aren’t known.
