Raceway's closure brings end to an era

By: BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer | Saturday, August 21, 2004 8:58 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ----- When racing legend Don "The Snake" Prudhomme was a twenty-something-year-old, fresh-faced kid making a name for himself at the newly opened Carlsbad Raceway, drag strips abounded in Southern California.

Forty years later, hardly a race track remains in the land where drag racing ---- straight-away competitions starting from a complete stop ---- made a name for itself.

Earlier this month, Prudhomme, 63, watched the final day of racing at one of the last old-style racing places ---- the aging Carlsbad Raceway. As motorsports fans gathered, bulldozers waited nearby. The track just north of Palomar Airport Road near Business Park Drive is being demolished to make way for a business park.

"The reason I went the other weekend," Prudhomme said last week as he recalled the final raceway event, "is because the sport's really treated me well .... and Carlsbad was a part of that. I just wanted to tip my cap to it. I even bought a (raceway) T-shirt. I paid my 20 bucks to get in, and they used to pay me to get in."

Prudhomme ---- the first driver to win four consecutive National Hot Rod Association series titles ---- now owns a racing company that's based in Vista, but most of the 50 employees work in Indianapolis, and Prudhomme divides his time between the two areas.

While Prudhomme went on the national circuit in the late 1960s and never returned to Carlsbad to race after 1971, the rustic raceway tried other inexpensive, money-making efforts to stay alive, including a successful dirt motocross track and a go-karting area.

As the decades passed, development started to cover the once bare hillsides near the increasingly shabby-looking raceway, and its owners contemplated a different future for the property. That future ---- the Carlsbad Speedway Business Park, a complex of office buildings that developers are now advertising to potential occupants ---- is scheduled to arrive next year.

The starting line

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, drag racing required little from track operators ---- just a quarter-mile asphalt strip, a grandstand of some sort, timing towers and someone holding starter flags, Prudhomme recalled.

Carlsbad's raceway began after the property's owners ---- including the Grismer family, which has continued to operate the track ---- went to the National Hot Rod Association's Winternationals event at the Pomona Raceway in the early 1960s.

"They got enthused and said, 'Let's do this on our property in Carlsbad,' " said Jim Nelson, who acted as the raceway project's 'front man.' The Grismers, who have not supported a last-ditch effort to save the raceway, have kept a low profile since the track closed and did not return phone calls for this story.

Nelson, a Carlsbad resident who owned Dragmaster Inc., took a year's leave from his company to start the racetrack. He lobbied for the then-landlocked site to be annexed by the city, got a road to the site and handled raceway permit applications, he said.

They had to bring in dirt to fill up an old lake bed and the local wildlife caused problems ---- "there were lots and lots of rattlesnakes," Nelson recalled. One of the proposed track's features also had its share of controversy.

"It was the first track that ever had guard rails on it," Nelson said. "There was a lot of screaming and jumping up and down and hullabaloo" because people thought the rails would be a safety hazard. Now, everybody's got them.

Gaining speed

When the track opened in 1965, it was "absolute turmoil," Nelson said. "We had tons of people, we had tons of cars, but ran out of daylight. We had to keep going the next day."

It wasn't a fancy place, but the guard rails were painted, the parking areas marked out and the hillsides mostly covered with native grassland, "which didn't look too bad when you looked at it from a distance," Nelson said.

Despite the crowds, the place never made a lot of money, said Nelson, who left the business by the mid 1970s. It's hard to turn much of a profit, he said, when you only operate on weekends and you draw your costumers from a limited pool of people ---- drag-racing fans.

Prudhomme made his last runs at the Carlsbad Raceway by 1971. By then, more upscale tracks, including the $1 million Orange County International Raceway, had opened and the elite of the racing world didn't go to places like Carlsbad.

"It wasn't that far up the road to go to the Orange County racetrack," Prudhomme said. "Once they built that, that was it for most all the other little tracks around here."

Changing direction

The racetrack pressed on with what Prudhomme referred to as the "door slammer guys" --- weekend racers with souped-up street cars ---- and track officials opened a hugely successful dirt track for motorcycle riders.

"It was pretty sensational," Nelson said as he recalled the crowds and the TV coverage. "The motocross got more national recognition than even the drag strip does."

Thousands would come when ABC's "Wide World of Sports" filmed motocross events at the raceway. People would walk from Palomar Airport Road down through the weeds and sneak in for free, Nelson said.

Elite motorcyclists enjoyed the dirt track because the soil varied throughout the course, said Shay Fretwell, a motorcyclist who turned pro in 1993. In some places it was hard packed, and in others it was sandy, so it "took really skilled riders to do well out there," he said.

"It probably isn't the best track for fans to watch because it goes out pretty far and you can't see all the parts, but as far as racing, I love that track," he said.

Fretwell, a 29-year-old San Clemente native who now lives in Mission Viejo, raced at Carlsbad from 1989 to 1997 and attended Carlsbad's popular "Commotion by the Ocean" racing events.

"Everybody knew everybody," he said of the annual event. "It was well put on, and it didn't start too early in the morning."

The finish line

While Fretwell and other motorcyclists raced the dirt track, new groups of weekend drag racers discovered the raceway. Engineer Bob Derderian, who moved to Carlsbad from New Jersey in 1981, used to come with people from his work at least once a month.

"We'd get 10, 20 people to go down from Hughes (Aircraft), and we'd all race our street cars," the 57-year-old racing enthusiast said. "We just had a blast."

Youths who might have been tempted to do illegal street racing had a safe, legal racing option at the track, he added.

"It's hard to explain to someone who's never raced at a drag strip the comfortable feeling .... (unlike a regular street) ... nobody's going to step out in front of you," he said. "Your concentration is on your car, on the track, on the other driver."

The track looked like nobody was taking care of it, but basic safety standards were strictly enforced, Derderian said, adding that "now there's no place to go."

One last race

As Derderian discovered the track, change was coming. Complaints about noise were starting to arrive from neighbors who had moved into the once-undeveloped land around the raceway, city Planning Director Michael Holzmiller said.

The raceway's owners sold the land to a developer in the early 1980s, though they continued to lease the site. And, in 1995, the Saturday night races became a thing of the past ---- the raceway was now operating under a conditional-use permit and the city restricted the raceway's hours, Holzmiller said.

This month, after years of delays, the early stages of construction begin on the long-planned business park. A new drain line project has cut across part of the raceway and a road project is next.

Racers haven't given up hope that there's some way to save the track. They've backed a last-ditch effort by Oceanside manufacturing company owner Bruce Santourian, who wants the state to purchase the land and preserve it as a sports park.

"We're generating a lot of interest," Santourian said, as he discussed his group's plans. "I'm getting bombarded by e-mails every hour."

If this effort fails, one of the region's last quarter-mile tracks ended its race against time this month.

Contact staff writer Barbara Henry at (760) 901-4072 or bhenry@nctimes.com.