Oh, yeah! The race…
How can I say this? I really went into the Winters upbeat and I came out dead beat.
Let me write this preface just one more time and so help me Lucifer, I will make a hard ass attempt never to write it again… this year.
If you’ve never been to a drag race, but have always been curious about one based on the fiery, noisy, crash-filled TV promos and a keen sense of excitement, you really should go. In fact, you must go. They are a lot of fun. They succeed royally on the social meter and the competition is like nothing else. It’s not bullsh*t. The long skinny Top Fuel dragsters and their chunky nitro sidekicks really do go from a dead stop through a quarter-mile in a little over four seconds and at speeds over 330 mph. One cylinder from these babies produces as much horsepower as a Nextel Cup stocker.
Howevah… for veteran observers like myself, it’s a bit of a different deal. These cars will never go faster than they do now. Since they broke the 330-mph almost a decade ago, they’ve stayed right where they are. FOR ME, well over half the thrill of going to the drags for at least 35 to 40 years of spectator-hood, was how fast will they run this weekend? What can we expect as low e.t. or top speed? Today, that impulse has been extinguished. As the great TV lawyer Perry Mason would put it, “Low e.t., Top Speed… “Incompetent, Irrelevant, Immaterial.”
The powers-that-be want parity, good, close racing, and personality. Not me, I enjoy a slaughter now and again. I like watching a better mousetrap slam down on the neck of the competition. I and everyone else (I hate to say it) love the explosions and the other seat-of-the-pants thrills. I want to see a 4.3-second, 340-mph Top Fuel run. I’ve yet to see a 330-mph Funny Car run and that’s about the only thing that passes as a pro perk for me.
Side-by-side high 4.50s at 325-mph, occasionally a 330-mph run won’t prop me up for a whole weekend. At some point, I’d rather watch female body-building, American Gladiator, Spongebob and if we’re at one of the slow tracks, American Idol, (God forbid!) or Jerry Springer.
I went out to Pomona on Friday, this trip making it the 45th year that I’ve spent some time at the joint. As I do at every race, when I first arrive I watch everything… from Super Street right on up the ladder. It’s time to get reacquainted and I like to see who’s in the house.
When the blown cars hit the concrete, my interest peaks. I was especially jazzed this year because I heard Jay Payne’s blown ’68 Camaro Pro Mod stomped the Comp-ers with a blistering 6.05… my cup of tea and an appropriate appetizer for what I thought would be the feast to come.
Basically dinner never arrived. First full run was by Alcohol Dragster racer Brandon Johnson, who clocked a 5.52, 263.58. Okay, I suppose, but the TA/Ds have posted 5.1s (!)… uh, that’s more what I had in mind. I know, I know. The techies screw up the rules and unfortunately slow the show down.
(Aside 3) To the Tech crews, leave the Alcohol cars alone. If another Drazy supercharger or some other cannon crashes the gate… let the son-of-a-bitch in! If NHRA’s pro segment is still up for sale, you need to make the Alcohol burners as attractive as they can be made. I won’t walk across the street to watch some legislated Alzheimer’s performance curve. Put the TA/Ds in the fours, and the TA/FCs in the 5.1s. Generally (not always) conservatism in any entertainment utterly and totally sucks. Let innovation rule. (End of aside)
I watched some more and a few fell off into the 5.40s and towards the end of the session Joey Severance clocked a 5.37 and Jim Whitely cranked a 5.39. That’s a little better, but it took Morgan Lucas’s 5.29, 270.21 to make me sit up and take notice.
Alcohol Funny Car was not a whole lot better. The Mr. All Everything of the class, Frank Manzo predictably ran the only 5.5-second charge with a decent enough 5.55, 251.78. Off of those runs, I wasn’t all that optimistic for anything special from the fuel cars and certainly not the always-cranky Pro Stocks.
For the first five or six pair, no Pro Stocks broke into the field. Finally they lopped off into the 6.6s. I can remember when Top Fuel ran in the 6.6s, so I almost get a mild pleasure tinge when I see the first PS 6.6, but it’s just a tinge and it most assuredly is mild.
I had a “this better be good” attitude when the Top Fuel dragsters opened the nitro segment and, for a moment, I thought “good” might not be of the right word strength. Brandon Bernstein and Tim Richards throw an opening mean left hook: a 4.534 at 330.3 -mph, the first time I’ve witnessed a 330 opening shot in quite a while. Two pairs later, Antron Brown shows impressively aboard master tuner Lee Beard’s dragster with low qualifying e.t. of 4.495, 330.07. Okay, we’re in the right time zone.
Acceptable low 4.5s and two or three more 330s were what followed. Hmmm… as the Firesign Theater might put it, “Not quite the solution I expected.” So much for the 4.3s, although I wasn’t really expecting that. Maybe a 4.44 at 334-335, but what the luck?
Funny Car was awful. I didn’t know it at that time, but pal Darr Hawthorne told me later that the association had added 100 pounds to the beasts. A hundred pounds? And it slowed ‘em this badly? Well, what do they say about global warming? The temps pick up something like a seemingly paltry six degrees and the Atlantic Ocean extends to Kansas.
Nuthin’ but 4.8s and 4.9s… times that were first appearing late last century. I began to cuss. I picked a fight with a guy in a wheelchair. And I stormed off to the nostalgia pits…
(Aside 4) It proved to be the highlight of the weekend for me. Maybe Hawthorne and Dave Wallace have it right on this subject. They twang the Nostalgia chord to perfection and are most assuredly race cars and racers.
Much to my delight, there were honest replications of the 1974 Plueger & Gyger Mustang, the “Bubble Up” Trans Am (tuned by Roland Leong) and 1980 U.S. Nationals Top Fuel Terry Capp, the 1972 Gene Snow Revell Dodge Charger, now referred to as the “Future Flash”, the ’74 Pisano & Matsubara Vega and a cast of characters ranging from superior mechanic and teacher Donnie Couch and the man with the most rides of anyone I’m aware.
Gary Southern, the 1988 U.S. Nationals Alcohol Dragster champ, says he has driven over 70 different blown cars ranging from Fuel Altereds to Top Fuel… and he’s looking for a ride. He gave me his number and as soon as I find it, I’ll give it to ‘ya.