When the last run has been made at about 11 o'clock tonight, when the sounds of racing engines straining to produce that last ounce of power have faded into the night air, Orange County International Raceway will be on its way to becoming a memory. 

   The raceway- known within drag racing as OCIR or just plain Orange County- is last on a long list of tracks that have had to give way to burgeoning urbanization. On Sunday morning, Southern California, the birthplace of hotrodding, will be without a regularly operating drag strip for the first time in 30 years. 

   The lease on the 120 acres the raceway has occupied for the past 16 years expires Monday. The sliver of land, nestled between the Santa Ana Freeway and El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, is in the heart of a high-tech industrial complex that the Irvine Co., owner of the property, will begin consructing in the spring.

   But there is still time for one last carnival of speed, and many of the biggest names in drag racing- with one notable exception- will be on hand to take a final handful of rocket-sled rides down the narrow ribbon of asphalt.

   When OCIR opened Aug. 5, 1967, the drag racers had finally succeeded in bursting through the magic seven-second barrier for the standing-start, quarter-mile run. At the end of that 1,320 feet, their highly specialized racing machines- made up of little more than a motor and monstrous gumball tires for maximum traction- were reaching 220 m.p.h.

   Tonight, 1983 Winston world Champion Gary beck of El Toro will be trying to better his own world record of 5.391 seconds. Blown off the starting line by 2,000 horsepower, supercharged engine running nitromethane, Beck will be almost a blur as he crosses the finish line at close to 260 m.p.h. 

   "We're taking both cars, and we'll be there with bells on," the 42-year-old Beck said of plans by car owner Larry Minor of San Jacinto to bring the team's two cars to The Last Drag Race. "We'd really like to win."

   But so would three-time champion Shirley Muldowney or Don (Snake) Prudhomme or Tom McEwen or Kenny Bernstein or Raymond Beadle. They and many others - a field of 400 cars is expected- want to be entered in the record books as the last winner at OCIR.

   The desire to be there is probably best illustrated by Roland Leong of Downey. In the two weeks since Leong's car was destroyed in a qualifying-run accident at the Winston World Finals at OCIR, his crew has worked feverishly to build another car for driver Mike Dunn, who walked away from the fiery crash unhurt. The new car will run tonight. 

   "I was there for the first race, and I'm going to be there for this one," said Leong, who arranged for his team's sponsor, Hawaiian Punch, to sponsor The Last Drag Race.

   Unfortunately, one of the biggest names in the sport- Don Garlits- will be missing from the lineup because of a previous commitment. Garlits, a drag-racing pioneer whose career dates well back into the 1950s, raced at nearly all the tracks that operated at one time or another in Southern California and said the closing of OCIR "just makes me sick down inside." 

   "That track has a lot of sentimental value for me," said Garlits from his home in Seffner, Fla., where he is putting the final touches on his own drag-racing museum. "I have had some good runs there and some poor ones too."

   "It was the ultimate dragstrip. It had everything you could want. It was very professionally run, it was right by a freeway and it was safe. It's a sad day in Southern California," he said.

   To world champion Beck, it's "like closing Dodger Stadium. It's a big loss to drag racing." 

   "People, particularly kids, often ask me how I got started in drag racing," he said. "I came up through ranks running sportsman (stock car) classes on Wednesday and Saturday nights at places like Orange County. I spent 10 years doing that; I created a professional career. 

   Now, without a place like Orange County, where will these kids get their start? They're taking away the backbone of our sport," he said.
 

Some Drivers Bitter

   If Garlits and Beck are saddened or nostalgic about OCIR's closing, others are bitter.

   "Money is the name of the game," said Prudhomme, four-time world champion and one of the winningest drivers in drag-racing history. "It's one of those things you can't do anything about, like when they tear down a little neighborhood grocery store to put up a skyscraper or a big shopping center." 

   Prudhomme, who grew up in Southern California and lives in Granada Hills, recalled a time when there was no lack of drag-racing facilities.

   "I was at Colton, Fontana, San Gabriel, Lions, Irwindale, San Fernando. I raced all of them, and we've seen all of them close slowly but surely," he said. "Noise and the value of the property have just chased us out." 

   San Fernando closed in 1969, Lions in 1972 and Irwindale in 1977. Lions, built on Los Angeles County Harbor Department property, was closed because of complaints from nearby residents about the noise.

   But noise shouldn't have been a factor in the demise of OCIR, in the view of McEwen who, like Prudhomme, has made his mark in both dragsters and their plastic-bodied bretheren, the funny cars. It was something more. 

   "You can't tell me noise is the reason, what with that air base there right next to the track," said McEwen, who lives in Fountain Valley. "Those jets are a lot noisier than we are." 

   "No, I think the Irvine Co. is just tired of all the bull----. They're upgrading that whole area, and they're tired of the problems the raceway might cause. It's just not a class deal to them," he said.

   But beyond the nostalgia and anger, the closing of OCIR is creating a serious concern among professionals such as McEwen, Prudhomme and Beck. 

   "I race all over the country and probably once or twice a year at Orange County, so it doesn't make too much difference to me," Prudhomme said. "But it will make a difference to the people of Orange County because they're going to have a lot of these kids who have built high-performance cars racing on the streets.

   "What concerns me is now there is no sanctioned, policed place where they can go race. I've talked with a lot of high school students, trying to persuade them to do their racing on a strip. Now I don't know what to tell them," he said.

   "We don't like to think about it, but it is a reality," Parks said. "In it are the roots of our organization, which was formed with the help of the California Highway Patrol as a means of finding a way to overcome what was a serious problem."

   After forming NHRA in 1951, Parks and a handful of other serious hot rodders began looking for places to hold organized and sanctioned drag races. One of the first they found, and one they continued to use for nearly a decade, was what is now John Wayne Airport. That came to an end in 1961 as increased air traffic meant that the runways could no longer be closed down on weekends.

   Six years would pass before two young men, who had been working separately to bring big-time drag racing back to the county, finally pooled their ideas to create Orange County International Raceway. 

   Mike Jones had been asked by the City of Anaheim to present a proposal for operating a drag strip at Anaheim Stadium. Noise problems and trying to schedule racing around California Angel games led to Jones to look elsewhere, primarily at the vast lands of the Irvine Ranch. 

   About that time, William White III was working on much the same idea. White was the stepson of Myford Irvine, head of the Irvine Ranch until his death in 1959.

   The facility was not just limited to drag racing. During its lifetime, the track was also used for sports car and motorcycle racing, road testing by automotive magazines and for filming commercials. 

   Jones was general manager until 1973, when he left to persue another career. White remained a little longer as raceway president before returning to his construction company. Vaughan has remained connected with the track, operating a defensive driving school. 

   With 12 to 14 major drag races a year, OCIR became one of the leading tracks in the United States in terms of attendance. The first race in 1967 attracted 14,000 spectators. More than 27,000 people attended the Winston World Finals two weeks ago. 

   If the track's history was marked with success, it also had some dark moments, particularly 1979 and 1980. A promoter who had taken over the operation of the raceway sought to boost attendance by staging rock concerts in conjunction with major races. 

   But "rock groups attracted a crowd that wasn't interested in racing," Vaughan said at the time. The constant fights and unruliness of the crowd climaxed tragically when a 24-year-old Fullerton man died after being hit in the head with a beer bottle during a melee.

   In the time Allen has been running OCIR, "We've put a lot of effort into making it one of the premier racing places in the country," said general manager Lynn Rose. "We've had no trouble since we reorganized. It's become a real family place, where people can enjoy themselves."

   "Drag racing is a good form of entertainment; it's a sport anybody can identify with," she said. "You just get on the line and go."

   Since it was announced that the raceway is closing, Rose said, "We've had an enormous number of calls. And none of them have been people saying they were glad." 

   There are others, beyond the racers and the fans, who will be affected by the track's closing, according to Rose. 

   "People from motels and restaurants and gas stations all around here, even up in Tustin and Santa Ana, have been calling too," she said. "They're going to miss us because they say their best weekends are when we're running a big event." 

   After tonights race, some of the raceway equipment, such as grandstands, will be moved to a facility Allen is operating in Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix. Some of it, like the three story timing tower and office complex, will be put into storage. 

   "I guess I believe in tradition," Allen said. "I'm going to build another drag strip somewhere in Southern California, and I think this tower should be there."
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