The Pebble Beach of Drag Racing
Half Moon Bay, The Pebble Beach of Drag Racing, welcomes you to the greatest drag racing spectacle ever held in Northern California. – Jim McLennan and Don Smith. Half Moon Bay Program March 1962
A great deal of San Francisco bay area drag racing action played out by-the-sea at the Half Moon Bay Drag Strip. Shown here is Swinging Sammy Hale in the Champion Speed Shop special getting out against against Lee Pendleton’s Allison V-12 powered monster machine at Half Moon Bay. The inverted wings on Pendleton’s car were an early Jocko Johnson effort at rear wheel downforce, and a reminder of how aeronautics and aerospace knowledge played into drag racing and motorsports innovation throughout the sixties.
Tags: Champion Speed Shop, drag racing, Half Moon Bay, Jocko Johnson, Sammy Hale
“Swinging Sammy Hale in the Champion Speed Shop special getting out against against Lee Pendleton’s Allison V-12 powered monster machine at Half Moon Bay.”
Talk about run-whatcha-brung! What is lost in modern drag racing — and motorsports in general, in this the era of the cookie-cutter and the so-called “Car of Tomorrow” — is the concept of “contrast.”
Contrast is interesting.