May 27, 2026 · 1 hr 47 min · 14 segments
The story of drag racing is typically seen as one defined by insane horsepower. The super fuels, the massive blowers, the acceleration that is unmatched by any wheel driven vehicle on Earth. But…
Brian LohnesHost
To truly understand the 340 mile per hour tires on today's funny cars and Top Fuel dragsters, along with those that run about 150 miles an hour [chuckles] on the back of Stock Eliminator and Super Stock cars, we have to head back to a decade where the sport truly came into itself, the 1950s.
In this timeframe, drag racing was a truly one-dimensional problem: how to come up with the best solution to take a car from a standing start through the quarter-mile finish line in the quickest time possible.
There was such a dearth of rules and regulations at this point governing the top classes of competition that any idea was effectively permissible.
Engine location, the number of engines, the type of engine, length of the wheelbase, where the driver sat, all of that was up for consideration.
The good news for them in 1950, despite what they thought at the time, even the strongest of their engines had not started to truly plumb the depths of the horsepower ocean that would be explored in the coming decades.
This said, they were still on the hunt for the drag racer's most elusive friend, traction.
When we look at the early cars racing at places like Santa Ana, we can see some interesting things going on with tires.
There are also a scant few photos from the 1950 timeframe that appear to show cars wearing what seem to be drag slicks, and they are, kind of.
Tire recapping was a massive industry at this time, and as the case was, there were companies across the country performing this service not just for passenger car tires, but for modifieds and jalopy race cars.
When we see some of the early drag cars with slicks on them, they are most certainly stock car or, at the time, so-called track racing tires, as they were referred to in the 1950s, especially in the early part of the decade.
Despite the fact that they were not dedicated drag slicks, those racers seemed to be onto something, and the logic made sense.
These things were somewhere between six to seven inches wide, whereas a normal passenger car tire was typically much more narrow, and they could use different rubber compounds when they were recapping the tires, which, even if not for drag racing, had to be better than some Montgomery Wards or Sears tires, right? The answer? No one really knew.
In fact, no one really knew a whole lot about a whole lot at this time, as it was a sport of rebellious kids that people either saw as a national scourge or a fad.
Roger Huntington was one of the most prolific and respected automotive journalists of the 1950s and '60s, and for decades beyond that.
He was renowned for his ability to take an engineer's approach to high-performance stories, presenting complicated information in a very down-to-earth way that people could understand and digest to the common gearhead.
He authored more than a half dozen books, wrote with insane volumes and prolific nature for virtually every car magazine you've ever heard of, and Huntington was rabid in his pursuit of the story of drag racing tires, as you will learn through this video, and there was a very good reason for this.The most interesting, innocent, and scientifically backed gaffe of his storied career.
Huntington in 1952 while writing for Rod & Custom magazine wrote a story that stated with the mathematics to back it up that the quickest a car would ever traverse the quarter mile was at nine point one seconds at a hundred and sixty-six miles per hour.
To truly understand the 340 mile per hour tires on today's funny cars and Top Fuel dragsters, along with those that run about 150 miles an hour [chuckles] on the back of Stock Eliminator and Super Stock cars, we have to head back to a decade where the sport truly came into itself, the 1950s.
In this timeframe, drag racing was a truly one-dimensional problem: how to come up with the best solution to take a car from a standing start through the quarter-mile finish line in the quickest time possible.
There was such a dearth of rules and regulations at this point governing the top classes of competition that any idea was effectively permissible.
Engine location, the number of engines, the type of engine, length of the wheelbase, where the driver sat, all of that was up for consideration.
The good news for them in 1950, despite what they thought at the time, even the strongest of their engines had not started to truly plumb the depths of the horsepower ocean that would be explored in the coming decades.
This said, they were still on the hunt for the drag racer's most elusive friend, traction.
When we look at the early cars racing at places like Santa Ana, we can see some interesting things going on with tires.
There are also a scant few photos from the 1950 timeframe that appear to show cars wearing what seem to be drag slicks, and they are, kind of.
Tire recapping was a massive industry at this time, and as the case was, there were companies across the country performing this service not just for passenger car tires, but for modifieds and jalopy race cars.
When we see some of the early drag cars with slicks on them, they are most certainly stock car or, at the time, so-called track racing tires, as they were referred to in the 1950s, especially in the early part of the decade.
Despite the fact that they were not dedicated drag slicks, those racers seemed to be onto something, and the logic made sense.
These things were somewhere between six to seven inches wide, whereas a normal passenger car tire was typically much more narrow, and they could use different rubber compounds when they were recapping the tires, which, even if not for drag racing, had to be better than some Montgomery Wards or Sears tires, right? The answer? No one really knew.
In fact, no one really knew a whole lot about a whole lot at this time, as it was a sport of rebellious kids that people either saw as a national scourge or a fad.
Roger Huntington was one of the most prolific and respected automotive journalists of the 1950s and '60s, and for decades beyond that.
He was renowned for his ability to take an engineer's approach to high-performance stories, presenting complicated information in a very down-to-earth way that people could understand and digest to the common gearhead.
He authored more than a half dozen books, wrote with insane volumes and prolific nature for virtually every car magazine you've ever heard of, and Huntington was rabid in his pursuit of the story of drag racing tires, as you will learn through this video, and there was a very good reason for this.The most interesting, innocent, and scientifically backed gaffe of his storied career.
Huntington in 1952 while writing for Rod & Custom magazine wrote a story that stated with the mathematics to back it up that the quickest a car would ever traverse the quarter mile was at nine point one seconds at a hundred and sixty-six miles per hour.
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