Saginaw Street and Strip

good reading

That's a pretty straight story. The SoCal dry lakes (Rusetta, Muroc and the like), being sea beds, were/are quite wide and very long. Not only could early hot rodders run fast, they could run side-by-side and often needed to as so many cars showed up for the early SCTA events that to get done before dark, they'd have to run 'em two abreast. When that happened it often appeared as if the faster car was pulling the slower vehicle along. Thus, one derivation of the term - drag racing.

The other derivation emerges from the low-rider group. When the cars were completed, often the first thing the driver did was to demonstrate how low he could go by dropping the vehicle to such an extent that the bunper would literally drag on the ground creating sparks as it was worn away. And when two would race each other in that mode - that, too, was called "drag racing".

News and information from .... the la-a-a-ast centu-u-u-ry-y-y .......

Thunderlungs: That is very interesting and makes complete sense. While reading I came across this take on the name's origin.


From: LIFE April 29, 1957 (Author Unknown)

HOT RODDERS’ NUMBERS GROW BUT ROAD TO RESPECTABILITY IS A ROUGH ONE

Official drag races – the name apparently stems from the need to “drag” or stay in low gears as long as possible – are held on quarter-mile strips in cars that are often a conglomerate of old chassis, high-powered engines and multiple carburetors. Today there are two national hot-rod organizations, the national Hot Rod Association and the Automobile Timing Association of America, and 130 legal strips in 40 states. Last year some 2.5 million spectators swarmed to the strips to watch the nation’s 100,000 hot rods in races that usually last little more than 10 seconds

Obviously from the LIFE magazine article of that year. Currently, there are nearly 350 operating drag strips in the U.S. Other than as revealed in that LIFE article, I've not heard that explanation ever repeated and would put it down to "creative license". <g>