Those who were involved in or know some of the history of the golden years of the sport are keenly aware that Bruton Smith’s four-wide drag racing concept was actually beaten to the punch by more than 40 years. Those who don’t and happened to be tuned into the ESPN2 broadcast over the weekend may have heard Warren Johnson allude to the four-wide contests he was a part of back in the 1970’s.
During the 1960’s and the aforementioned 70’s, cars lining up four-wide was relatively more commonplace that it is with just one track and one national event today. During an era when virtually any idea to put on a better show was fair fame and construction and insurance costs weren’t so inflated, stepping outside of the box to race an extra set of cars wasn’t so outside of the box.
Current and former race tracks the likes of St. Louis International Raceway, Lon Island’s New York National Speedway, Minnesota Dragway, York U.S. 30 Dragway in New York, Illinois’ Byron Dragway, California’s Fontana International Dragway, and Ohio’s Dragway 42 all held “quads” at some point in their history.
A large number of the four-wide contests that were held at said tracks were amongst the Stock and Super Stock racers of the day, and often were a result of simply too many cars on the property. Thus by racing them four-wide, officials were able to whittle down the fields quicker.
However, as those who have attended either of the first two installments of the 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX can attest, there’s nothing quite like nitro four-wide, and indeed such events were held in the 60’s, pitting a collection of AA/FD’s four at a time blazing the hides all the down the quarter mile in unison. Such races took place at tracks in the Southern California, Midwest, and Northeast regions as “novelty” type events.
A famous four-wide jet car race also took place in Fontana back in 1966; the only race of it’s kind known to have occurred before zMAX did it two years ago.
So next time someone tries to blow smoke up your, well, you know, about the recent invention of four-wide drag racing, you’ve got the knowledge to tell them otherwise.
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