There are also references to dog drag races in publications throughout the 20th century, but the earliest that explicitly mention cars come from from the 1950s. The 'roadway' meaning of drag was transferred from England to the USA and, in the 1950s, the teenage pastime of racing cars 'along the main drag' began to be called 'hot rodding' or 'drag racing'. whose husband has got a month for 'griddling in the main drag' (singing in the high street). The poor get in on the act again (they are always with us, after all) in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, 1851:Īnother woman. Somewhat like a low car: it is used for the carriage of timber, and then is drawn by the handle by two or more men.īefore long, the term 'drag' came to be used for the thoroughfares along which drags were trundled. Samuel Johnson defined such a vehicle in A dictionary of the English Language, 1755:ĭrag. That connection comes in the 18th century, by which time smaller drags/drays were being used for the hawking of goods, and the poor souls who hauled them around had the ingenious idea of adding wheels. Neither the medieval sleds nor the modern day scrapers seem to be the stuff of drag racing, so where's the connection? Road flattening work is these days done using heavy wheeled vehicles called scrapers. Sleades, carres, or drags, furnished for. In the 1570s, Elizabeth I introduced various legislative acts that were collectively known as the Poor Laws. This form of cart without wheels was known from the 14th century, under the name of dray.

To trace the origin of the 'drag race' we need to go back to the pre-supercharged days of the 1500s, when a drag was a heavy sledge that was dragged by horses. While it is correct that hounds have been raced along scent trails since at least the early 1900s and that this continues, it turns out that the US sport of drag racing has only a very tenuous connection with anything being dragged along. Those thoughts were probably due to the recent increase in the number of drag hunts in the UK, since the rather ineffective ban on fox hunting was introduced in 2005. My first thoughts on the origin of the term 'drag race' brought to mind images of horses and hounds chasing after a scent left by dragging a smelly carcass or cloth along the ground. What's the origin of the phrase 'Drag race'?

The race is essentially a competition to determine which vehicle has the greater acceleration.

Sport and games What's the meaning of the phrase 'Drag race'?Ī race between road vehicles - usually two vehicles over a quarter mile straight track and from a standing start.

Usage of slick tires which should be smooth and soft enough to grip the track. All the performance enhancements must comply with the rules of IHRA and its restrictions based on the class of the car which is running. The car is the main component on which various strategies are made. The increase of power depends upon the modification done in the engine. As the drag racing vehicles are modified to make it lighter and more powerful as compared to their standard form, it make them special.Ī lighter vehicle is that whose power to weight ratio is more which helps to gain maximum acceleration. The above-mentioned divisions are there to ensure if the cars are evenly matched during the race or not. During the drag racing events, the extent of the modification of the vehicle depends upon the classification of the vehicles.

Drag race car