If you want to know more about drag racing in Georgia, visit www.georgiadragracing.com. It's a mother lode of news, history and photographs.
  It will also have a link to the first track I attended regularly, Brainerd Optimist Drag Strip, just over into Georgia from Chattanooga, Tenn. You can see it from I-75 heading toward Atlanta. Here's a shot of it a quarter-century ago, when it was a quarter-mile:



  The track has a nice Web site and board, www.brainerdracing.com, with lots of pictures of  the weekly races, and you can see how the track has changed.

 My favorite track these days is George Ray's Wildcat Hot Rod Drag Strip in Paragould, Ark. There's no other place like it. Turn off Ark. 135 into George's driveway, keep going 100 yards or so, and you are at the starting line (see Google Earth image at right). He opened the strip in 1961, and not much has changed since, except that it's now an eighth-mile. It runs Sundays from March through October, $8 to race or  watch. Here's a pic from 2006:



    Most of the current online info about the Wildcat can be found at  www.midsouthracers.com; that seems to be where a lot of the George Ray's racers hang out these days. There is an older, inactive site with lots of good stuff, www.geocities.com/georgeray12345/ .  
   Paradise Drag Strip in Calhoun, Ga. -- another track born in 1961 and still going (see my "other pictures" page) -- has a site at www.paradisedragstrip.net . 
   An excellent ghost track Web site that inspired me is www.lakelandraceway.com,  about the Lakeland drag strip in Memphis, Tenn. It's about to be lost for good to a housing development.
   If you like Chevy Z-11s and Ford Thunderbolts, such as those that ran at the Double H, here are a couple of excellent sites that also have links to even more good stuff: www.hanksz11page.com, dedicated to the Jack May Z-11, and www.thunderbolt.cc/ ,  Craig Sutton's exhaustive, authoritative documentation of those race cars. You can read the history and see more pictures of  the Bob Thomas/Howard Neal "Strip  Teaser" Thunderbolt, which has been restored.
   More Thunderbolt pics, plus a slew of other Ford super stock and factory experimental cars, are at www.philbonner.com, Web site of the famous Georgia drag racer. His 'Daddy Warbucks' Falcon was a favorite of mine.
   Joel F. Naprstek (Race Car Art) does illustrations of historical and modern racing cars of all types, specializing in 1950s and 1960s super stock and factory experimental drag racing. He has a vast catalog of photos to work from, and his art will fit just about any application you can think of. Visit www.jfnstudios.net.