Banning Street Drags: Drag Racing like it used to be

October 2020 • By Nestor Cabrera & Tony Thacker • Presented by USAutomotive

Camaros, Corvettes, GTOs, Mustangs, Novas, Pintos, and VWs: The first ever, 1/8-mile Banning Street Drags had it all and all for 10 bucks.

Time was every city in So-Cal had a dragstrip or, so it seemed. Those days are long gone as urbanization gradually disappeared many of those tracks. Today, Los Angeles has but three: Fontana, Irwindale and Pomona, which is only twice a year. However, a new venue just opened up at Banning 10 miles west of Palm Springs on the road to LA.

The story of drag racing at Banning began decades ago when promoter Andy Marocco made a valiant attempt to build Mopar Drag City. He had Mopar involved and the U.S. Army and the approval of the Banning City Council. For numerous reasons, Drag City never got built but Andy never gave up his dream of organizing drag races at Banning. And now, in the weirdest of years he and a bunch of friends pulled it off.

Rather than build a strip, the City allowed the use of the Banning Municipal Airport that is right off the 10 Freeway. At 2,200 feet above sea level it’s a 90-foot-wide, 5,200-feet runway in very good condition. Not being a dedicated strip, Andy and his crew had their work cut out to make it a strip in the one hour between the skydiving stopping and the 3pm scheduled start.

More than 150 cars and a couple motorcycles were pre-entered and maybe 50 more entered at the gate. It was a good, diverse field that included imports, hot rods, muscle cars and some late model performance sedans. Racing began around 4pm and ran into the dark, which was fun and reminiscent of old-time racing. There were even a few exhibition cars including Story Byrd in his Modified Roadster ‘Revelation’ that put on exciting, crowd pleasing smoky runs into the dark.

The Banning Street Drags was a great event and let’s hope the City gets behind it.

For more info about future events visit: BanningStreetDrags.com