McFarland, Calif.

FROM Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County to Carlsbad near San Diego, dragstrips once spread thick across Southern California. Lions in Wilmington, Orange County International in Irvine and tracks in Irwindale, San Gabriel and San Fernando were among the many that popped up and, just as often, suddenly disappeared.

Drag racing started its transformation into a professional sport in Southern California of the 1960s, growing beyond its stature as the counterculture alongside the counterculture; the supercharged, nitromethane-fed alternative to square and hippie living.

How all that began to change in 1970 is a turning point in “Snake & Mongoose,” an independent film in the postproduction stage. As a moderately budgeted drag racing biography picture, “Snake & Mongoose” is similar in scope and ambition to 1983’s “Heart Like A Wheel.” And along with coming films like Ron Howard’s look at Formula One, “Rush,” it is part of what may be a minirevival of the racing-movie genre arriving in 2013.

Tracing the lives, friendship, rivalry and partnership of the drag racers Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen — known universally to fans as Snake and Mongoose — the film spans the early 1960s through their showdown in the final round of the 1978 United States Nationals. Plans are for the film to appear in theaters next spring.