| ZMAX DRAGWAY UNLOCKS RICH CAROLINA DRAG RACING HISTORY | ||||
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The ghosts of the old Carolina strips will rest in peace with the first national event since 1974 … 
Engine builder Gene Fulton is a Carolinas legend winning five world championships. He was one of the earliest champions in the area.
Races that once were started by flagmen long ago gave way to an electronic "Christmas tree." Debates over which car hit the finish line first are now settled by super-slow motion video and timing clocks that measure a run to within one-ten-thousandth of a second. Rudimentary drag strips are just as much a part of the past. At zMAX Dragway, there are four-yes, four-all-concrete lanes laid for racing; certainly a far cry from the dirt drag strips and abandoned airstrips that were drag racing's building blocks. Defunct Carolina facilities such as Broadslab, Shuffletown and Spartanburg are part of an extensive two-state, straight-line lore that have produced a golden lineage of champions, with Bruton Smith's latest creation taking the sport to a completely new realm. "We raced at some really interesting places," said Buddy Martin, half of the famed Sox & Martin team that won three NHRA championships. "We ran tracks where if you didn't get stopped in time, you'd go sightseeing through the trees on top of the mountain and you were just gone.
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ONLY KNOWN VIDEO FOOTAGE FROM SPARTANBURG DRAGWAY, COCA-COLA CALVACADE OF FUNNY CARS
(Video courtesy of Steve Brock) 
Gene Fulton's White Wagon is probably the most famous drag racing car to come out of theupstate South Carolina/Charlotte market.
"We raced on dirt tracks and old airport runways all over the country in those days. Wherever there was racing and some money to be made, that's where we went." 
Fulton remembers the White Wagon, blindsided by what he calls a "hit and run" driver.
Like Sox, Lenoir's Don Carlton was a pioneer in Pro Stock. Carlton, a former textile plant worker in his hometown, won six NHRA national events before his 1977 death in a crash during testing. Rickie Smith, of King, who's still active in the Pro Modified ranks, won five IHRA Pro Stock championships and has notched multiple wins in NHRA Pro Stock action as well. His son, Matt, prefers two wheels to four-he's the reigning NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle titlist. SHUFFLETOWN DRAGWAY, 1974 - FULTON'S WHITE WAGON
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SCOTTY CANNON - SHUFFLETOWN DRAGWAY (CHARLOTTE, NC), 1987
(Shuffletown videos courtesy of Scott Caudill) Two-wheel greats include nitro Harley racers Mark Cox, of North Wilkesboro, Ray Price, of Raleigh, and Jay Turner, of 
Scotty Cannon has the most championships of any professional drag racer along the North and South Carolina border. He lives in Spartanburg County.
The same golden legacy exists across the border in South Carolina, especially the Upstate area around Spartanburg. Spartanburg County, in fact, boasts 25 world championships among racers such as Scotty Cannon and his son, Scott, and Gene Fulton. Headed by racers such as Ray Head, Harold Gault and Michael Martin, the Palmetto state's list of standouts is just as long as North Carolina's. Fulton's most memorable car was a 1964 Chevy II station wagon. While at face value a seemingly unlikely prospect as a great drag car, Fulton said it was actually the perfect such vehicle. "That thing bought and paid for my business," he said of Fulton Competition, which is among the elite engine builders in Pro Modified racing. "A lot of those tracks we raced on after I got back from Vietnam didn't have a great deal of traction, but that car would go down them and it could run a multitude of classes." The wagon was totaled at Bristol when a competitor blindsided Fulton near the finish line. Fulton took the car home and buried it behind his shop on U.S. 221. "You could probably find at least eight to 10 tracks within a hundred miles of Spartanburg," Fulton added. "I'd run four times a week in the early '70s-Wednesdays at Wadesboro (N.C.), then Friday, Saturday, Sunday at Spartanburg, Shuffletown, Shelby or wherever. You'd only win about as much as $300, but $300 then is like $1,000 now." Time and urban sprawl, Fulton said, caught up with many of the early tracks in the Carolinas. "A lot of places were smaller tracks and a lot of them got eaten up when cars began to go faster than the tracks could handle," he said. "And a lot of them were built just a little bit outside of town, and then the town over-ran them." Fast forward a few decades and you have a totally different picture.
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Charlotte's new drag strip.
"I've always wondered why more of the guys didn't have their shops down here," said Top Fuel owner-driver Doug Herbert, who moved to Cherryville in 1991 from Southern California. "I think over the next few years we're going to see more of them move to the Charlotte area; No. 1, because of the drag strip, and No. 2, because of the racing technology, all of the quality people here that are racecar people, and the new wind tunnel in Concord." Herbert believes zMAX Dragway will be a major boost to his business, Doug Herbert High Performance Parts in Lincolnton. He was one of the first to lease a suite at the new track, even though having an NHRA national event in his backyard ratchets up the pressure to win. 
Charlotte's gone but not forgotten drag strip -- Shuffletown Dragway.
Jeg Coughlin Jr., who won his third NHRA Pro Stock championship in 2007, couldn't agree more with Herbert's opinion that Charlotte is "the" place to be for racing. Coughlin and Dave Connolly compete in the same class for team owner Victor Cagnazzi, a native of New York City who chose Mooresville's Lakeside Business Park as the place to set up shop. "It's a state-of-the-art facility with all the latest and greatest technology, engine development, chassis development-we're one of the few teams that build our chassis right there in the shop," said Coughlin, one of an elite 10 drivers to have won more than 50 NHRA national events. "There are close to 30 folks that work in the organization, from running the shop day to day to running the teams on the 24-race NHRA schedule. We were already here, and now you add the drag strip and the wind tunnel. Pretty much everything you could ever need is literally within a 15-mile radius of our shop."
WILD DOORSLAMMER RACING IN CHARLOTTE CIRCA 1989
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Click to visit our sponsor's website QUICK EIGHT RACING IN CHARLOTTE - 1988
Concord resident and three-time NHRA Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson races out of Ken Black's KB Racing shop, also 
Pro Modified legend Charles Carpenter lives 5 minutes from the new zMax Dragway. He grew up racing in Charlotte, Shelby (NC) and in Spartanburg (SC).
"I feel that the new dragway is going to make a huge impact in propelling NHRA to a new level in our community," said the current NHRA Pro Stock points leader. "We chose to have our shop located in Mooresville for the simple fact that the resources available in this area give us limitless possibilities. There is an awesome variety of talented employees and racing-related businesses that supply the best parts and services with easy accessibility." Herbert's father, Chet, was one of the frontrunners in aftermarket drag racing parts manufacturing, and reportedly attended the first organized drag race in Southern California, held on the property that is now John Wayne Airport. For much of drag racing's early years, everything about the sport, it seemed, was tied to that part of the Golden State. But the passage of time and the growth of NASCAR technology are starting to add fuel to a cross-country shift among all facets of racing, Herbert said. "There's a lot of racing manufacturing still out in California, but because of the cost of property and manufacturing out here, I've got a feeling that in the next five to 10 years there are going to be a lot of them moving to Charlotte," said Herbert, who won at Norwalk, Ohio, earlier this year. "California isn't the racing capital of the United States anymore, Charlotte is."
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