Your Slow Car Might Actually Feel Fast at This New Street Legal Dragway
A new 330-foot dragway in Southern California is designed to help reduce street racing and cater to all cars in a safe environment.
Among several racetracks across the country getting closed down, there is one new beacon of racing that just opened in Perris, California, called Street Legal Dragway. Not only is it a new drag strip in a world where drag strips are rapidly disappearing, but it’s also the nation’s first 330-foot dragway designed specifically to host street cars. Owner Andy Marocco built it with one goal: Give SoCal’s street racers a safer venue to race.
After several false starts with local governments and even the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Marocco has finally delivered on a decades-long dream to build a street car-friendly drag strip. When speaking to the Daily Bulletin, Marocco said that “no solutions existed” for street racing despite considerable media attention since the advent of takeovers. He wants his ultra-short 330-foot dragway to be part of the solution to the problem. The stated goal is “to stop people from illegally racing on public highways and streets, where they risk killing themself and taking innocent lives.”
The new track is located at the Perris Fairgrounds, near the Perris Auto Speedway half-mile dirt oval. Several tracks are located nearby, including a kart track, a BMX dirt track, and a motocross track. It’s over an hour to the dragway from most of Los Angeles, which doesn’t offer many tracks in close proximity. While there are alternatives, Street Legal Dragway is designed to be cheap and safe, with a driver entry only costing $40.
While it’s not the normal quarter-mile track, it’s an interesting new concept that keeps racing truly cheap. According to Marocco, previous attempts at hosting sanctioned races were highly successful, and the soft opening for the new dragway shows it has the “numbers to be successful.”
If you want to give the nation’s shortest drag strip a try, it will open every other Friday through the end of this year, with more dates anticipated for 2024.
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