Remembering . . .
Utah
Drag Strips
Miscellaneous photos ,proof sheets, track schedules, racer business cards, and a time slip kept in a drag race scrapbook, from years working at Bonneville Raceway. Courtesy of Mel Bashore
Magna

Mel Bashore's official shirts from various years. Courtesy of Mel Bashore
Mel Bashore, Bonneville Raceway tech official, ca. 1976-88. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Kurt Lindorff's Pro Stock Vega, Bonneville Raceway time slip, Aug. 8, 1979, ride-along passenger with his sister, Karen. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Mel Bashore, hosing down asphalt between two jet dragsters, 1983. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Kurt Lindorff's B/G Vega, about 1978, Bonneville Raceway. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Glenn Pearmain's BAD, Bonneville Raceway. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Bracket racer, "Green 'n Mean,", Bonneville Raceway. Courtesy of Karen Bashore
Otto Therkelsen. Courtesy of Kay Therkelsen
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Bonneville Raceway
I went to school with Harry Allen. He later almost got killed at Bonneville Raceway, where the Rocky Mountain Raceway track is now. His driveline broke. I'd always been at the starting line, so me and this gal I was dating and my buddy and his girl friend, we went to the end of the quarter mile. I always wanted to see these guys come through fast. He was racing the "Want Bird." He came fllying down and his driveline broke. The U-joint broke and it just spun inside that car. It basically tore his leg off. When they put his leg back together, there's an inch or two missing. He walks really bad. I saw "President Lincoln" there. I met Connie Kalitta. It sure was a lot of fun in those days. I remember seeing Shirley Muldowney. John Force was driving a car sponsored by Mountain Dew. He couldn't beat his mother in those days. He was terrible.
Dennis Trayner
Rex Pearmain, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, August 14, 2017
St. George
Trophy won by Dennis Trayner at Dixie Elks Dragstrip. Courtesy of Dennis Trayner
Salt Lake City
- Bonneville Drag Strip, 1965
In 1965, I was going to college in Salt Lake City. I learned that a new drag strip was opening shortly before I was to leave for summer break. My college friend, Fred, and I got a job at the entrance gate for the racers. We only worked a couple of races before we had to leave to return to our homes in California. There was another older drag strip, Salt Lake Raceway, only a mile further west on the same 2100 South road. The two strips were in direct competition with each other for racers and spectators. The newer strip, where I worked, won out. Part of our job was to help racers get their cars on the scale near the entrance gate. Mostly our job amounted to a lot of standing around, but I did get a racing jacket with the name of the strip on the back. At one of the races that we worked, John Mazmanian faced a local A/GS racer, Rex Crane.
Mel Bashore
Idaho-based dragster on scales in pit area, Bonneville Drag Strip, opening day, May 1965. Courtesy of Mel Bashore
Dick Bourgeois, driver of Big John Mazmanian's A/GS Willys, after beating Rex Crane's A/G coupe in a match race, Bonneville Drag Strip, June 6, 1965. Courtesy of Mel Bashore


Pit area, Bonneville Drag Strip, opening day first race, May 2, 1965. Courtesy of Mel Bashore
1965 Bonneville Drag Strip official's jacket.. Courtesy of Mel Bashore
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Salt Lake Raceway, 1961
I raced at the SLC drag strip in August of 1961. The reason I remember it was August was because we were towing the car back from racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats. I changed the rear end gears and made 1 or 2 passes until the track people asked me to leave because the car was dropping salt at the starting line. I have no idea how fast I went that day. Running at Bonneville and then the strip was my first time racing. I only ran the Chev one time. It was my daily driver until it became a Bonneville car. When I got back from the flats I took the engine out of the Chev and put it into a 1953 Studebaker which then became my flats car (the Stude at the time was my go to work car) and my '58 then went back to being my daily driver. I went on to drive unlimited hydros and still go to the flats. We started a company that makes all the data recorders for the top fuel class in drag racing.
Ron Armstrong

Ron Armstrong's 1958 Chevy at Bonneville Salt Flats, August 1961, prior to returning to Salt Lake City and then making a couple of runs at Salt Lake Raceway (below). Courtesy of Ron Armstrong
Ron Armstrong running his 1958 Chevy at Salt Lake Raceway, August 1961. Courtesy of Ron Armstrong


An entry slip from 1965 and the first trophy won by Dennis Trayner in his Austin Healey at Salt Lake Raceway, dated June 10, 1962 in D Sports class. Courtesy of Dennis Trayner
Dennis Trayner at the wheel of his Austin Healey at Salt Lake Raceway. Courtesy of Dennis Trayner
Trophy won by Dennis Trayner in his Austin Healey at Bonneville Drag Strip in the 1960s. Courtesy of Dennis Trayner
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Salt Lake Raceway, 1960s
About that time [late 1950s], I had a '28 T bucket. I had a flathead Merc in it. I run it on nitro. It had three carburetors. You'd just have to take the jets out of the carbs. I had a little Moon tank with a pump on it, right inside the driver's compartment. It was an open top on the roadster. As you're driving, you're pumping. It was kind of a pump like you used to check radiator pressure caps. It had a guage on it. You'd have to keep it at 5 or 6 pounds of pressure all the time. If you put 10 in there, the needle and seat wouldn't hold it at idle, but once you were making a run, it didn't matter because you're trying to get fuel in there. You could only put about 40% nitro in there. Even with the jets out, you didn't have enough openings to let enough fuel in. That would go around a 100 in the quarter. I'l bet it didn't weigh much over 1400-1500 pounds. I had a Ford truck tranny in it, but I just used two gears--just 3rd and 4th. In about 1960, Gary Nielsen, he and his dad started Salt Lake Raceway. It was on the north side of 2100 South. So we'd run out there a little bit. Then I moved to Vegas in '59. I had a service station down there. I wasn't old enough to legally have it. I had to have a partner sign for it. He and I went in it together. He was a fireman in North Vegas. He worked every other day. He wasn't married. He took over the service station, but I ran it. We were partners until he screwed me out of it. I moved back to Salt Lake for good. Then Ross Schoenfeld, Paul Schoenfeld's brother--Paul used to drive the "Want Bird," Larry Aiello's top fuel car--Ross and I built a junior fuel dragster. We just bought a stock 327 fuel injected short block. We used Mondello heads and Hilborn injection on it. We just run straight nitro. That thing was pretty fast. We'd get going 170s which we thought was real fast then. But right away, Dan Richins and Al Pehrson had a 354 in a homemade dragster that they got from Gary Nielsen, who owned Salt Lake Raceway. I think he built the chassis for it. It was nothing great. Al Pehrson was getting divorced. He couldn't afford to keep the race car. I bought him out. Dan and I bought a Woody car. About that time, Mike Reynolds, he worked for me. Both he and Paul Schoenfeld worked for me in my service station. I got in with some guys here that were doing a lot of repair work for Kennecott. They had 671 diesel engines in a lot of their equipment. That old mining equipment, hell, they'd only run them at 1800 RPM. When they're overhauling them, the repair kit had rotors for 671 blowers. They never used them because there's were good. One day I was down there. I saw they had all these rotors so I made a deal with them and bought them real cheap. There was a guy named Mark Danakis and a guy named Capps. They started a blower company called DanCapp. They made a lot of blowers. This was probably before Bowers or Hampton or any of those got going. They made a pretty good blower. So I made a deal with them on rotors. I always had a new blower on my car, which in those days, made a hell of a difference. When we'd take the old blowers and anodize the rotors and put them in a 671 case, they were pretty ill efficient. You had to start putting the teflon strips in them. So I always had a new blower. We put a new one on about every week. When we raced in those days, when we put the 392 in it, I always had a real good magneto, a real good fuel pump, and a real good blower. I found out, it didn't make a hell of a lot of difference what you had in it, you'd burn them or they'd come out anyways. As long as you kept the good heads and good blowers. Paul Schoenfeld was real good at doing heads. You'd take the old 392 head, knock the exhaust and intake seats out of them, put 2-inch intakes and 2-inch exhaust, port them out, that's all we did on heads. We started running pretty good in the west. We were pretty successful. Al Pehrson drove that car. Then when Al quit, he didn't want to drive any more.
Rex Pearmain, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, August 14, 2017
This was the old one that was on the south side of 2100 South. Right at the end of that strip, there was a brick building. If you didn't stop, there was a big building there. One hundred feet off the asphalt at the end. The shutdown was adequate for the speeds we were runnng in those days. Dick Godfrey's sister, I think her name was Karen Godfrey. She was dating Mike Reynolds. They arranged for a match race with Dick Landy's altered '63 Plymouth, one of those Maximum Wedge cars. Landy took one of those and put a Hemi in it and then moved the rear end forward. In reality, it was one of the first funny cars. That's the one that Landy was running. In fact, a guy locally bought that car. Robert Runyan bought that car from Landy. He brought it up here to match race and just thought they were going to have another super stocker here to run him. Mike Reynolds had a bright orange '56 Chev that was called "The Wild Thing." It was bright metalflake orange. He was going to race Landy. Landy was probably a 10 or 11 second car at the time. Reynolds was lucky if he got out of the 14s. He might have run 13.9s or something. I had the junior fuel dragster then. I said, "Let's take the Hilborn injection off it." We jerked the radiator off it. It had a tunnel ram on it. He took the radiator right out of the car. He took the bumpers off it, trying to make it lighter. He took the rear seat out of it. We put the injection on it. Up where the radiator was normally, we had a Moon tank, like a 3-gallon fuel tank, that was in my junior fuel car. So the injection there was on it. So he goes up there and raced him in this match race. Hell, the difference between horsepower between gas and nitro, even though he probably lightened the car up 500 pounds by taking the radiator and bumpers and that off. Here's Landy with basically a funny car. We just went out there and just killed Landy. just ran away from him. But it didn't have disc brakes, just drum brakes. His first run, he had those teeny tiny tires on the front like everybody used to run. In a way, it was kind of stupid because it gave you less of a run-out on the clock. But we all did it anyway. He had to make the turn down at the end, but his car wasn't stopping. We didn't have parachutes on it. It had been a car that had been going a hundred in the quarter and all of a sudden it was going 125 or 130. Hell, the tires about scuffed off making that turn about 35 miles an hour. We didn't have the rear brakes too tight because they used to have that line lock on the front wheels. You had a line lock to stage, then you have your rear wheels almost turning. Sometimes they would in those old days. You'd see the front wheels locked up and the rear wheels kind of going slow because they had the line lock holding it on the line trying to launch. We adjusted the brakes up on it. He decided that if he was ahead down toward the end, he would just let up on it. After he beat him the first time,, Landy was pissed. He said, "I come up here to match race, not run some damn fuel car." Landy was the one with a cigar in his face all the time. When he made the turn on that first run, those little front tires, they were tubeless. Hell, I don't think they lost any air, but they scuffed them all up making that fast turn at the end. When we put the injection on in my service station, we just took it out on 3300 South about midnight. Hell, he run it through first and second gear and he came back with the biggest smile in the world. Holy smoke! That nitro really brings it to life because it triples your horsepower. We were running straight nitro on that. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that 327 engine wasn't putting out a thousand horsepower on nitro.
Rex Pearmain, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, August 14, 2017
West Jordan


Trophy won by Dennis Trayner in his Austin Healey at Copper Raceway. Courtesy of Dennis Trayner
I was one of the owners of Copper Raceway in West Jordan, Utah. We only lasted a couple of years is all. I guess the most notable racers we had was Horsepower Engineering, which was Doug Robinson out of Pasadena, California. Then we had Dave Crower of Crower Cams. He come up and raced. He ended up crashing and wrecking his rail. We had Melrose Missile, the hot Plymouth. We had that jet car. Then we had a lot of other cars, most of them not as notable. That was the main ones that I remember now. I mean, it has been 50 years! I was 25 years old when I started the strip. I had been involved with my father clear back into the early to middle 1950s in racing. He was an old racer. He was an Intermountain midget champion in 1940. He was also the first person to go over Widowmaker when it was up at Ogden. That was put on by bhe Ogden and the Salt Lake motorcycle clubs. Regarding how I started Copper Raceway, I was selling real estate. I happened to be in the barber shop with Harry Carleson, Jr. Back then it was Fred A. Carleson Chevrolet, Pontiac, Cadillac downtown. I just happened to know him just a little bit. He was starting to get interested in racing. He said, "I ran into a couple of guys that were up here looking to build a drag strip." He said, "Here's their card." He said, "Why don't you contact them. You're selling real estate." So I contacted them. They had the San Diego Raceway in Ramona, California. A fellow named Ray Richards was the fellow I ended up dealing with. He became one of my partners in the race track out here. They asked me if I'd be a partner in it. I was immediately interested. We put together what funds we could and gathered in a couple of other partners. We had a little bit of money, not much. Paul Darrow and Ray were partners in San Diego. Paul Darrow ended up dropping out. It became mostly Ray Richards and I. We basically built the track ourselves. We got his dad-in-law involved with us. He had construction equipment and we had to rent stuff. So we ended up literally building the drag strip ourselves. We did everything we could. We paid to have the strip prepared to airport specs, what they called it. We met NHRA specs which was 60 feet wide. I think we were 3500 feet long. Something like that. Then we had a lot of runout after that which was dirt. That was how we got started. We had a lot of fun, but didn't make any money. That's the way it was. We were competing at the time with Bonneville Drag Strip. They pulled a couple shenaniguns on us. That's the way it is. Salt Lake Raceway was about at the end of their operation. I knew Gary Nielsen I had known Gary since I was twelve years old. He lived up in Holladay and that's where we lived for awhile. I got to know him up there. At Copper, we had a timing tower. I do not have a single picture of that place. And my brother was the photographer out there! It would have been nice if we could have kept going, but we were unable to sustain it like we wanted to. We had bleachers for maybe a thousand people or something. We had fences up and down both sides of course. We had a nice paved pit area. The location of the strip was . . . the west side of our property is 5600 West. That was the west side of our property. The drag strip was located about 5500 West. Later there were houses built on it. I don't know if it's part of that subdivision that's out there now. We ran night-time too. We never did run on Sundays at all. We ran Saturday night. That was our whole thing, right from the start. We wanted lights. We put them up. That part worked out very, very well. We had a searchlight come out there for advertising. I think there was one time we did have him pull his unit down towards the end of the track and point straight down the track. I'm not sure why now, because we had it well lighted. I thought we did. That was the only time. They had the old arc ligthts from World War II is what they were. They had about a six-foot lens on them. They would twirl them around and use them for advertising. We had trophies. I can't remember what the cash payouts were. A few hundred dollars here and there is what I remember. I don't know who won it or how much. We used Horsepower Engineering as a reward to race against the fastest local racer. The exhibition with the jet car worked really well. That was exciting to watch. When he hit that afterburner at the starting line, why, it bent our fence out front. The fence was a chain-link. It had a 100 feet of sign on it that said Copper Raceway.The sign was made out of 4x8 plywood wired to the chain-link and when he hit the afterburner, it caught that sign and it bent the poles a little bit that were holding the fence up. It was a little strange. There was a lot of thrust to it. Ray Richards tried to get a number of other big racers to come, but it just didn't happen. We tried to get Gas Ronda. He agreed to it, but it never did come about. He had the big Ford, sponsored by Downtown Ford, I think, in San Francisco. And Don Garlits. Here again, scheduling with some of these big guys was impossible. They would be scheduled a year or two in advance. At some of these big events, they would get in a championship round and that would use them up. We didn't get everybody that we wanted, but we did get some. Like I say, we had the Melrose Missile for several weeks and Horsepower Engineering all summer. Dave Crower, I think, was here for three races. We booked them in for more than a single night. Gary Nielsen was always good. He came out after he had closed Salt Lake Raceway, he came out and raced on our track. It was good that we had Ray. He had a lot of contacts and knew a lot of people from down there in California. We switched from NHRA sanction to AHRA. They didn't use the Christmas tree. We used a starter, a guy with a flag. They used a little different system. When you raced different classes of cars together, instead of having a delay on a Christmas tree from one side to the other, they used car lengths. You'd have one car pull up a car length or so. We had that marked on the strip. We had win lights to tell which lane won. The announcer would give the time and the speed. I had originally hired Bob Welti to be the announcer. He came out and he was here for a week or two. He said, "I am just really too busy." He said, "But I've got a good friend at a radio station who would love to do it." He brought him out, but you know, I don't even remember his name. But he was very good. Our flagman was normally a kid named Dwayne Wideman. We had limited concessions. Coca Cola came out and brought a bunch of stuff. A concessionaire brought out a trailer for hot dogs and hamburgers. I can't remember who it was. We had pit passes printed. We had a place where they drove in to park, coming in off 7800 South, both for the pits and the spectators. Of course, we didn't charge for parking. I don't remember how much we charged to come in to spectate. At that time, there was no houses in the area. There was nothing out there but farm land. When you got to the old airport, from there, out, there was absolutely nothing north of you or south of you but farm land. We had leased the property. I think a 20-year lease. And who from, I don't even remember. It was farm land, but the farmers did not own the property. There had already been an investment company there and bought all the farm land out there and leased back to the farmers. We had a quarter of a section. It was a quarter mile wide by a mile long. For advertising, we used some radio. We got some free radio. We did some TV spots. I did spots with Paul James and Bill Marcroft. I did several spots with Marcroft and several with Paul James. We were doing live TV. Everything was live. Nothing was taped back then. We'd have a car there and interview the driver. I would talk. Paul James or Marcroft would ask questions. We had a minute or a minute and a half spots. Doug Robinson and Dave Crower said our track was the smoothest track they had ever raced on. They said they had never been on asphalt that was that smooth ever. They really liked it. It was brand new. They really did like it, but like I say, we just really weren't that successful.
Ron Winegar, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, June 26, 2017
For drag racing, the Salt Lake Timing Association. They rented the old Number 2 Salt Lake Airport on 7800 South. They rented that every other weekend on Sunday during the summer only. After going through the clocks, you could almost coast to a stop. It was so long. Every;body raced there and I raced there a little bit there as I became eligible to drive. My dad built an engine for me and my brother. We both raced out there some.
Ron Winegar, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, June 26, 2017
How I got started in cars, one of my neighbors was a mechanic. My dad or mother had no interest in cars. They drove slower than heck. That's where I got my speed desire. They would go down to Fairview every weekend during the war. They had an old '39 Plymouth that they'd take the back seat out of. They had gas ration cards and the neighbors would save them and give it to them so they could buy gas. They'd go down to the farm. If they killed a pig, they'd bring back half a pig or something. If potatoes were in season, or corn, they bring it back. My sister and I would have to lay up on top of the stuff in the back seat. Up through Spanish Fork Canyon, they had coal trucks running through all the time. . . . when my dad was driving, he'd never pass one. If they went five miles an hour, he went five. But my mother would go a little faster. I blame that on any speed things that I got interested in. The first car that I ever had was a '47 Ford. I got it when I was 14. On the farm, I'd driven tractors and that. I knew how to drive in my old farm trucks just on the farm. I lived right by Westminster College [in Salt Lake]. They had alleys behind every home where the garages were. I'd drive it up and down the alleys until I could finally get a license. Some of the neighbor kids that were neighbors to me there, they started putting Tri-Power, dual carbs, Edmunds heads on the flatheads. By the time I got a driver's license, I had that all done to mine. The neighbor had a garage down there by me and I'd go clean the garage if he'd help me do some of the work. That was my early start. That old Ford--my bishop had a wrecking yard. He owned a place called Taurus Auto here in Salt Lake. I got tired of the flathead so I got a '49 Cadillac that had been wrecked. I put the engine in there, put a LaSalle tranny in it. It ran pretty good, tut then in '55, the Chevs came out. I couldn't beat them so one of my family members worked for a Chrysler dealer. I got a V8 Chrysler from him and he helped me a little bit with it. I tried running the Chevys but I gave up on that. In '58 I bought a 348 Tri-Power Chevy and started racing it. We raced at Salt Lake Airport No. 2. The airport was real rough and it had terrible traction. We used to use a Moshley tire. That was a recap tire. They're pretty soft rubber. Everybody'd use them. This was before Mickey Thompson started building slicks. I had a service station at that time and AMOCO, American Oil Company, came out with a tire. Bucron, they called it. Real soft rubber. Real good traction. But they wouldn't wear worth a damn. If you sold them to your customers, they were mad because they wore out. But they were a pretty good race tire. We'd make all different kinds of things on that '58 Chev. You couldn't buy wheels. Well, Crager started coming out with wheels later, but we'd kind of have to make our own. Go to the machine shop and have them make one wide wheel out of two. It was harder than hell to mount tires on because you had the different uneven planes. You'd have to get it over two uneven layers in there. But you could put a pretty wide tire on. About that time, I had a '28 T bucket. I had a flathead Merc in it. I run it on nitro. It had three carburetors. You'd just have to take the jets out of the carbs. I had a little Moon tank with a pump on it, right inside the driver's compartment. It was an open top on the roadster. As you're driving, you're pumping. It was kind of a pump like you used to check radiator pressure caps. It had a guage on it. You'd have to keep it at 5 or 6 pounds of pressure all the time. If you put 10 in there, the needle and seat wouldn't hold it at idle, but once you were making a run, it didn't matter because you're trying to get fuel in there. You could only put about 40% nitro in there. Even with the jets out, you didn't have enough openings to let enough fuel in. That would go around a 100 in the quarter. I'l bet it didn't weigh much over 1400-1500 pounds. I had a Ford truck tranny in it, but I just used two gears-- just 3rd and 4th. In that same car when I got that 348 Tri-Power In '58, it might have been a year or two earlier, Gary Nielsen, he and his dad started Salt Lake Raceway. It was on the north side of 2100 South. So we'd run out there a little bit. Then I moved to Vegas in '59. I had a service station down there. I wasn't old enough to legally have it. I had to have a partner sign for it. He and I went in it together. He was a fireman in North Vegas. He worked every other day. He wasn't married. He took over the service station, but I ran it. We were partners until he screwed me out of it.
Rex Pearmain, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, August 14, 2017
I raced at Copper Raceway. I ran my junior fuel car there when that was running. In fact, that's before I was with Dan Richins. The track was really good. It went a little up hill. It had a good shutdown, a little like Bandimere. You're going uphill so it shut down easy. I liked it, but they never got it really set up very good for bleachers and the crowd and that. It was only open that one season. They were competing with several of the drag strips then. Bonneville was still running. I know that at least two of them were running. There might have been three. It was a pretty good track, but it didn't make it.
Rex Pearmain, telephone interview
with Mel Bashore, August 14, 2017
I was at Copper Raceway one day when a short front-engine dragster with a SBC and fuel injectors broke the drive shaft at the starting line during launch for the run. The car barely moved forward and the engine was running wide open and several guys were trying to figure out how to shut it off. Finally one guy jerked the coil wire off which killed the engine. It seemed like an eternity before it got shut off. It was a real scary situation. As far as I remember, the driver lost his right leg below the knee and it messed up his other ankle. I have recently asked other friends of that era if they were there or knew anything about it and nobody seems to know anything at all. [Note: Contact the site administrator if you have any information about this.]
Bill Jones