The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) is a governing body which sets rules in drag racing and hosts events all over the United States and Canada. With over 40,000 drivers in its rosters, the NHRA claims to be the largest motorsports sanctioning body in the world.
Donald Glenn Garlits is an American race car driver and automotive engineer. Considered the father of drag racing, he is known as "Big Daddy" to drag racing fans around the world. A pioneer in the field of drag racing, he perfected the rear-engine Top Fuel dragster, an innovation motivated by the loss of part of his foot in a dragster accident. This design was notably safer since it put most of the fuel processing and rotating parts of the dragster behind the driver. The driver was placed in front of nearly all the mechanical components, thus protecting him and allowing him to activate a variety of safety equipment in the event of catastrophic mechanical failure or a fire. Garlits was an early promoter of the full-body, fire-resistant Nomex driving suit, complete with socks, gloves, and balaclava.
The Los Angeles County Fair is an annual county fair. It was first held on October 17, 1922, and ran for five days through October 21, 1922, in a former beet field in Pomona, California. Highlights of the fair's first year were harness racing, chariot races and an airplane wing-walking exhibition. The fair is one of the largest county fairs in the United States. Attendance has topped one million people every year with the exception of three years since 1948, and is the 4th largest fair in the United States. Since its opening year, over 89,000,000 visitors have attended the LA County Fair.
Shirley Muldowney, also known professionally as "Cha Cha" and the "First Lady of Drag Racing", is an American auto racer. She was the first woman to receive a license from the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to drive a Top Fuel dragster. She won the NHRA Top Fuel championship in 1977, 1980, and 1982, becoming the first person to win two and three Top Fuel titles. She won a total of 18 NHRA national events.
Michael Lee "Mickey" Thompson was an American auto racing builder and promoter.
Wallace Gordon Parks was an American writer. He was the founder, president, and chairman of the National Hot Rod Association, better known as NHRA. He was instrumental in establishing drag racing as a legitimate amateur and professional motorsport.
Hot Rod is a monthly American car magazine devoted to hot rodding, drag racing, and muscle cars—modifying automobiles for performance and appearance.
Alex Xydias is an American racecar driver, active in the early days of the auto racing sport involving hot rods.
Nostalgia drag racing is a form of drag racing using cars from the 1950s, 1960s and lately the 1970s.
Dean Moon was an American automobile designer. He grew up in Norwalk, California. Moon was around cars and racing from his youth. His father owned "Moon Café" and had a go-kart track he called "Moonza", a pun on Monza. Dean was involved in dry lakes hot-rodding in the late 1940s. He founded MOON Speed Equipment (c.1950) and worked to improve the quality and safety of speed and racing products his entire life.
The National Hot Rod Reunion is a gathering of nostalgia drag racers, street rodders and automotive enthusiasts based on the California Hot Rod Reunion. The first four years of the National Hot Rod Reunion were held at Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The event has been held in Ohio, but has returned to Bowling Green where the event has been established as the main site since 2008.
Robert Einar "Pete" Petersen was an American publisher who founded the Petersen Automotive Museum in 1994.
California Hot Rod Reunion is a gathering of drag racers, hot rod enthusiasts and street rodders held in Bakersfield, California, United States.
The Pomona Raceway, is a racing facility located in Pomona, California that features a quarter-mile dragstrip. Since its opening in 1961, the dragstrip has hosted the NHRA's Winternationals event – the traditional season opener – and since 2021, the season's last race, the NHRA Finals. These two events have contributed to its becoming perhaps one of the most famous dragstrips in North America. The facility has a seating capacity of 40,000 spectators, and it is one of the few dragstrips in the USA that is operated directly by the NHRA. This dragstrip has also gone by the nickname of The Fairplex, in reference to its location at the Fairplex, formerly called the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.
Jack Beckman is a professional drag racer who drove a NHRA Fuel Funny Car for Don Schumacher Racing until 2020. Beckman won the SuperComp championship in 2003, his first Funny Car championship in November 2012 and achieved the third fastest Funny Car time in NHRA history in 2015. He raced the quickest time in Funny Car history earlier in that same month.
The So-Cal Speed Shop is a specialty parts shop for hot rods, specializing in cars built in the 1940s. It offers parts online, as well as a number of retail stores in the western United States and two in Canada. The headquarters is located in Pomona, California.
National Trail Raceway is a quarter-mile dragstrip located between Hebron and Kirkersville, Ohio, USA, off of U.S. Route 40. The race track is located about 30 minutes east of Columbus, Ohio. It is known to local residents as 'National Trails'.
Santa Ana Drags was the first drag strip in the United States. The strip was founded by C.J. "Pappy" Hart, Creighton Hunter and Frank Stillwell at the Orange County Airport auxiliary runway in southern California and was operational from June 19, 1950 until June 21, 1959
Doug Thorley was an American Funny Car drag racer, hot rodder and businessman. In 1967, he won the NHRA Nationals' first Funny Car Eliminator title, and was given Car Craft's All-Star Drag Racing Team Funny Car Driver of the Year Award in 1968. Hot Rod magazine describes him as "one of drag racing's most famous early era drivers."
Steve Reyes is an American photographer and storyteller from Oakland, California. Reyes has been included in Don Garlits' International Drag Racing Hall of Fame (2002), NHRA California Hot Rod Reunion Honorees (2009), and the East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame (2011).
