Posts
10
Joined
8/14/2016
Location
Southern California, CA, USA
Edited Date/Time
19 hours ago
I visited the Carlsbad Raceway site on June 28th, exactly 40 years since the final Grand Prix was held there on June 28th, 1986. Commercial development has claimed most of the southwest portion of the track, including the legendary Carlsbad Freeway and notorious downhill. Nature has reclaimed nearly all that was left untouched by bulldozers and earthmovers. The start straight, first turn, and Devil's Drop remain recognizable if you know what you're looking for.
Here are my photos with some playful amateur Photoshop for amusement, well-known photographs from 1986, and other memorabilia.
Excellent photos, sad to see what "progress" does to the landscape.
These were taken in 1999, when I made my dirbike comeback after 16 years of career focus and ZERO riding. Just in time to race MX and SRA GPs at Carslbad a few times. Lucky me!
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
SRA GP, the drag strip in background. this was laid out between the strip and Palomar airport road.
Taken from just west of the track, looking toward the ocean in winter 1988/89.
The road leading out the bottom of the photo is the airport road past the MX track, 2 miles away.
Every open space in this photo except the narrow rectangular tulip fields just behind the beach, is now COVERED in suburbia and concrete. Even the fucking airport now looks like LAX.
Thanks Tag. That is so cool how you put the pictures into the current condition of the land. Brings back such good memories of watching the GP’s and competing in the amateur events on that sacred piece of land.
Thanks for doing this, Tag. Coolest post on Vital in quite some time.
Thank you - appreciate it. Having grown up back east, this place was so mythical and iconic to those that ONLY saw it in magazines and then once a year on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Making that emotional connection between what it meant to me - to all of us - back then and what it is today, a quiet, peaceful memorial to a lost era, was profound.
Thanks for the cool overlays Tag. Great for us that have never been there!!
Well done, Sir!! I live 3 miles from there for the last 45 years!😀
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