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 VI.

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 the 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.

2008 was beyond all expectations. We were suffering from a very weak economy that will continue to plague us for some time and we managed to bring in record numbers of participants and spectators. We had 246 racers and crowds were estimated at over 15,000 for the weekend. The two days of racing was a huge hit and racers made the most out of Friday nights Kingman High School home football game. Attendance was at an all time high for the football game with so many race teams parked all around the field.This year we raced eight classes and crowned champions in each. We had two rounds of burn out contest much to the crowds delight as participants burned their tires to the rims just to hear the crowd roar.

Our celebrity race's could not have been more fun. For the first time the race between the Mohave County Sheriff, Tom Sheahan and the Kingman Police Chief, Bob DeVries, was a best two out of three race. When the smoke cleared the Sheriff was left standing holding the "Officers Cup". The race between the Kingman Mayor John Salem and the Bullhead Mayor Jack Hakim was just as exciting , but unfortunately they were only able to race once and at the end Bullhead Mayor Jack Hakim was standing holding the "Mayors Cup".

Ever facet of the event went better then the year before, the addition of the 4000 seats of grandstands gave spectators the view and comfort they have always wanted and the fans responded in droves. The two beer gardens saw record beer sales for the weekend and we are very proud to say that the Kingman Police reported no issues with and drunken spectators. The hospitality suite was catered by Chuy's on Saturday and the Brunswick Hotel on Sunday and both reported fantastic results from the fans who took advantage of the first year of the hospitality suite.The hospitality suite provided starting line viewing with two plasma screen TVs showing the live streaming coverage of the event. All this could be enjoyed while eating food with soda's from Coca Cola or even the sponsored beer from Budweiser

Fox Sport Net and Wally Cahill had a blast all weekend filming the racers. The two thirty minutes TV shows were a very big boost to the exposure of our event and our sponsors. This raised our event to a whole new level of exposure.Napa Racing Kingman Street Drags VI can still be seen on Motorsport Mania in replays.Check out their website at www.azmotorsportmania.tv.

Scott "Lucky" Hudson and Speedscene TV were here and Scott took the opportunity to make a run or two down main street is his nice "Currie Enterprises Nova" drag car. They talked about the event for weeks afterwards on their on line show that you can catch on Tuesday nights at 6pm live on www.speedsceneracing.com.

Now here we are in 2009 for our “Napa Racing Kingman Street Drags VI”. This year we will start out on Friday night September the 18th with a welcoming party and the Burn Out Contest. Saturday September 19th and Sunday September 20th 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.

This year we will have the addition of the Kingman Down Town Merchants Associations and the Route 66 Associations Kingman Down Town Block Party on Saturday. They will add a Car Show for all the street rodders who don't race their ride but love to show it. Their will be food and vendors with the Saturday evening festivities culminating with a live concert and street dance.

We expect this year will be nothing short of spectacular. Of course the economy is in the doldrums but people sure don't seem to miss the opportunity to be part of history. Racers and spectators alike flock to Kingman for this event and we plan to have a few new wrinkles to keep everyone entertained. We should see more participation in the celebrity races as the Sheriff and the Chief have invited many other Law Enforcement Officers to participate. Invitations have gone out to other Mayors to see if they would like to dethrone Jack Hakim from his crown.

Fox's Sports Network will be back with Wally Cahill and his Motorsports Mania show to televise this years event.Look for many others that have never been here before make this year their first.

Kingman should be proud of being the heart of the largest piece of the Historic Route 66 and all the history that comes with that. They should also be proud of the ability to think outside the box and allow such a diverse event to be held in Down Town Kingman, furthering the ties to the love of automobiles and Route 66. This event has become something of pride for the whole community, it involves so many different parts of the community who all come together for the benefit of everyone. Last year we had over 250 volunteers give their time to make the event the success it was and we had the largest participation from the sponsors of our community. If it wasn't for all of these sponsors and volunteers this could never have happened. So if you get the chance to thank any of them please make sure you do.

For any of you who have not had the chance to be a part of any of our other events you don't need to wait. You can join the volunteer committee which is the group that will make this years event happen or you can plan on trying your hand out at the racing, even if its some thing you have never done don't worry there will be plenty of people with the ability to help you learn everything you need to know.

I look forward to this years event with great expectation, only time will show us what new and historic achievements we will see. We hope all of you will come join in on the fun.