Books by Tommy Lee Byrd

During the 1950s and 1960s, the sport of drag racing exploded in popularity. In its early days, drag racing had a class for everybody, from professional rails to four-door sedans. As a participant sport, drag racing made itself very accessible, and as a result, drag racing facilities sprang up all over the country, some national in scale and others very small and local. This was great, for a while, but with the sprawl of suburbia and various economic conditions including the growing expense of racing, hundreds of drag racing facilities were lost across the country. Many of these were places of legend where the biggest names in the sport got their start or ran some of their most memorable passes. Others were relatively unknown, but served a local area's needs for a safe place for local speed addicts to run their cars. For whatever reason, they are no longer in business, but evidence of their existence remains. This book takes a look at many of the lost quarter-mile tracks across the country. Some of them are gone completely, paved over to make room for housing developments or strip malls. Others are ghostly remnants of what once was, offering a sad and even eerie subject for the photographer. The images are teamed with vintage shots of drag racing's glory days, sharing what once was one of America's most popular pastimes with the modern reality facing these facilities today. For fans of drag racing's past, it's a sobering and interesting study. The stories are true and the photos are thought provoking, which makes this book hard to put down. Lost Drag Strips is a 2013 International Automotive Media Competition award winner and won "best-of" in the book category. Tracks include: Lions Associated Drag Strip, Orange County International Raceway, Riverside International Raceway, Bee Line Dragway, Motion Raceway, Motor City Dragway, Oswego Dragway, U.S. 30 Drag Strip, Dover Drag Strip, Pittsburgh International Dragway, Connecticut Dragway, Pocono Drag Lodge, Lakeland International Raceway, Green Valley Raceway, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Hudson Drag Strip, Shuffletown Dragway, Brainerd Optimist Club Drag Strip, Brainerd Optimist Drag Strip, Paradise Drag Strip, Double H Drag Strip, Southeastern International Dragway, Smithville Drag Strip, Lloyd's Drag Strip, Harriman Drag Strip, Green Valley Raceway Drag Strip, Drag City, Loudon Raceway.

Street racing is now regarded as a highly illicit and dangerous activity, but this was not always the case. For as long as there have been cars, there's been racing, and a lot of acceleration contests took place on public roads. The car owner/drivers were not only competing for pride, but typically there was some kind of cash wager involved. For this reason, it became popular in the 1950s for some enterprising street racers to disguise or hide the true potential hidden within their cars. Taken to its extreme, a very fast car could appear completely unmodified. Such cars were called 'Sleepers, ' since their appearance would lull you to sleep until they passed you at full speed. The art of building a successful sleeper has varied over the decades as styles and times have changed. One fact that remains constant is that the car's appearance belies its performance potential. In Street Sleepers, the secrets are exposed and the owners and builders of some of America's quickest street machines share their deceptive art. Outstanding photography and in-depth owner interviews tell the tale, and even engine specifications and quarter-mile track times are shared. There was a time when such things were well-guarded secrets, but this book truly exposes all the tricks! For anyone who's ever dreamt of building a great sleeper, or has been relieved of some cash by betting against one, this book is a must-have. Countless tales have been told about some secret speed trick or hidden power in an otherwise sedate-looking vehicle, but Street Sleepers is lined with true stories of real cars that live up to the grand hot rodder's tradition of deceptively fast cars. The photos in this edition are black and white