The History of Kingman Street Drags

Ever wonder how such a big event gets started?? Read along as Brian D. takes a quick moment to reflect back upon the past events that have lead us up to Kingman Street Drags V.

In May of 2000 Route 66 Wings and Wheels Inc. had the vision of putting on a drag race on a city street. We would limit it to 330 feet for safety. This wasn’t a totally new concept, it was being done very successfully in Winnemucca, Nevada and a few other places in the U.S. By using the basic format that was already being used and with tremendous help from many local business people we were able to convince the then Police Chief, Larry Butler and the entire Kingman City Council to allow us to put on the very first “Kingman Street Drags”.

We held the event on Saturday night after the conclusion of the Route 66 Fun Run. We ran the first street drags on Burbank Street, the street between Centennial Park and the County Library. We had to wait until the library closed at 6pm before we could begin racing. Cars began pouring in at 2pm and had the parks concession stands sold out of hot dogs before we ever got to 6pm.

125 cars later, after we wouldn’t allow any more in, police estimated the crowd at over 6000 spectators. What an overwhelming success!!! It was such a success that we felt the need to move the venue to our community airport for the next year. We had over 175 cars and over 5000 paying spectators for our now two day event which had now grown to include vendors and even exhibition vehicles.

The following year we joined an already existing Kingman Air and Auto Show as the automotive performance for their show. Again a big success, but by no means the type of event that we started with. We were now running exhibition runs only with no timing system and each car only making two runs per day on the Saturday and Sunday. Fun but not where we intended to go. The idea was Route 66 Wings and Wheels Inc. would be the recipient of the proceeds from the show to further our cause of building a permanent multifaceted motor sports complex. This went on for the next four years with our involvement and portion of the show growing exponentially each year. We culminated with the last year of our involvement in the Air and Auto Show as a stand alone drag race after the air show shut down at 5pm and ran until midnight . We ran 190 cars and had six fuel Altereds as highlighters. But after the conclusion of that years show it was deemed to not be a financially viable portion of the show and we stepped away from the Kingman Air and Auto Show.

In 2006 we approached the Kingman City Council to once again hold a Kingman Street Drags on a city street. With many years of experience now under our belts and after much research and planning the City of Kingman once again granted us permission.

This time the “Napa Racing Kingman Street Drags III” raced in September and had 178 cars participate. However this year with the new location right down main street in downtown Kingman, the audience grew to an estimated 10,000 spectators. We had every kind of car imaginable from everyday driven Honda Civics to Pro Mods and Blown Alcohol Funny Cars. We ran from 10am to 10pm and ran four classes of quick eight competitions. As every fan stayed in their seats until the finals at 10pm you could just see everyone wanting more. The event was again deemed a huge success.

In 2007 we again planned a one day “Napa Racing Kingman Street Drags IV”. The build up to the event was incredible, participants contacted us from all over the U.S. and we expected to exceed anything we had done in the past. But mother nature stepped in and delivered the untimely rain every drag race dreads. We did finally get a chance to get most of the day in after waiting for about a three hour delay to our start. This cost us many of the participants that had planned on attending and did put a dampener on the audience. But we still managed over 130 cars and 6000 spectators regardless of our soggy start. Despite our partial rain out we still garnered a full page in the illustrious “Hot Rod” magazine thanks to legendary photographer Tim Marshall’s coverage of our event.

Now here we are in 2008 and the City Council has granted us two days for our “Napa Racing Kingman Street Drags V”. Saturday September 20th and Sunday September 21st we will once again transform main street Kingman into a historic drag strip. This is the only official, fully timed drag race down main street Route 66 in the world.

We expect over two hundred cars this year and will see between 15 and 20 thousand spectators over the two days. The community involvement and support has grown with the size of the event. We have support from every corner of the business community as well as the entire city and staff. We will once again have the celebrity race between Tom Sheahan, our County Sheriff and Bob Devries, our City Police Chief. This year we will also have our newly elected Mayor John Salem race another of our dignitaries, both in a best two out of three format.

The media coverage this year will once again include Hot Rod Magazine but they will be joined by Drag Racing Magazine, Vintage Fuel Magazine, Drag Racing Online, and Tri State Motor News. Even Fox Sports Network’s Motor Sports Mania will film the event to be televised the following weekend.