I may be wrong about this, but I believe that the phrase "drag racing" originated about the time that the first folks did
some "organized" side-by-side racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats. My belief is that the salt surface was "dragged" to make
it smooth (as is typically still done, with a vehicle dragging a heavy weight across the salt).
The goal in typical drag racing (i.e., on a dragstrip) is to get to the finish line before your competitor does. A big deal in all of this is how well your vehicle can accelerate. In land speed racing, it appears that the big deal is what top speed can be attained while on the course, specifically in the measured mile (or kilometer, as the case may be).
Accelerating safely in a straight line is common to drag racing and land speed racing. And there are a few names of racers
I have met who were relatively well-known (in those racing circles) who have done both.
Among them are Boris Murray and Leo Payne, both in motorcycling. They both rode top fuel motorcycles as drag racers,
and later made attempts to break motorcycle land speed records (in their respective classes) at Bonneville.
I was in my twenties when I visited Boris Murray at his home in Laverne, California. I had seen his pickup truck, with its
camper shell, at some drag races in southern California (this was in the early '70s). I had read -- in a motorcycle magazine --
that he built dragbike frames for others, and I wanted to work for him as a weldor. This never happened, but I still have
fond memories of talking to him in his home garage.
Another time (this was at the Irwindale drag strip, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles), I watched something come off of Leo Payne's Harley-Davidson dragbike when he blew an engine during a run. Later, in the pit area, I saw his bike. It was missing a cylinder. I was holding part of the engine -- either a head, or a cylinder -- in my hand, and didn't know that I was being photographed. Imagine my thrill, (still about 22 years old) a couple months later, when I was reading a motorcycle magazine, to see my picture in it -- holding part of Leo Payne's engine! And in fact, when I saw that pic for the first time, I was wearing my favorite blue shirt . . . the same one that I was wearing that day when I got photographed at that race. What a kick!
