Qlispé Raceway Park
ActiveActive Still racing today.
Also known as Spokane Raceway Park; Spokane County Raceway
Quarter-mile drag strip in Airway Heights, just west of Spokane, sharing the grounds with a 2.3-mile road course and a half-mile oval. It opened in 1974 as Spokane Raceway Park. Spokane County ran it from 2008, and the Kalispel Tribe bought it in October 2021 and gave it the name Qlispé, the Kalispel word for the Camas people.
- Opened with the 1974 AHRA Spring Nationals, where Gary Beck beat Don Garlits
- Garlits set a top fuel world record of 5.732 there in 1980
- Hosted the AHRA World Finals in 1989
- Raced
- 1974-present
- State
- Washington
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- May 31, 1974
- Sanction
- NHRA Division 6
- Track
- 1/4 mile
- Address
- 750 N Hayford Rd
Airway Heights, WA 99001 - Elevation
- 2,345 ft (715 m)
- Coordinates
- 47.66610, -117.57463
- Contact
- qrpracing.com (509) 202-2766
Big races
History
The drag strip opened with a three-day AHRA Spring Nationals on May 31 and June 1-2, 1974. The field included Don Prudhomme, Dennis Baca, Gary Beck, John Wiebe, Tom McEwen, Ed McCullough, Jerry Ruth, Danny Ongais and Sush Matsubara. Beck beat Don Garlits for top fuel, and Prudhomme beat Tom Hoover in funny car. At an AHRA meet in mid-August 1980, Garlits broke his own top fuel world record with a 5.732. The AHRA World Finals ran over four days in August 1989. The 315-acre complex, built for $2 million northeast of Airway Heights and west of Spokane, also has a road course and an oval. The strip opened under AHRA sanction, switched to IHRA in 2015, and now runs under NHRA. One newspaper briefly mentioned drag races in Spokane on May 29, 1966, which hasn’t been confirmed.
Video
More in Washington
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