Racing returns, a quarter mile at a time

April 01, 2015

A '32 or '33 Ford Altered Coupe makes a run during one of the rare state-approved race days.

ORGANIZED DRAG racing still hadn't reached Cuba when Fidel Castro gave motorsports the black flag in the early 1960s.
Rallies and road races were the island's competitions of choice, starting with the 100-mile Havana Cup in 1905. The racing scene grew significantly in the 1950s (as it did in so many countries), with three Gran Premio de Cuba events attracting some of the world's top drivers.
Then the new government banned car racing and other "bourgeois" professional sports, throwing its support behind the amateur athletics it felt was more in keeping with the socialist ideal.
Of late, however, drag racing has somehow found a toehold, with occasional state-sanctioned race days and a small but fervent street racing movement in the Cuban capital. The latter is the topic of a documentary, Havana Motor Club, that will debut this month at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Tri-Five Chevrolets like this '56 two-door sedan are a timeless drag-racing platform.

American filmmaker Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt worked on the movie for three years, riding with the Havana drivers in their '51 Fords and '55 Chevys as they set up clandestine races and later turning to crowdfunding for the cash to complete his project. Playboy (yes, Playboy) has a good read on the film.

Does the arrival of drag racing signal some revised thinking that could bring more motorsports in Cuba? Probably not. More likely it's just something that slipped past the notice of the sociocultural gatekeepers, fed by an abundance of the type of cars that made this heads-up, straight-line racing popular in its beginnings and requiring little more than two vehicles, two drivers and a quarter mile or so of flat pavement.
One thing, though, is certain.
No one could call drag racing bourgeois.