I’ll not forget my first visit to a drag strip.  Drag strips are often in out of the way places.  By definition it was and is an “outlaw” activity.  I was a high school sophomore. I lied to my father about my intentions, in order to gain permission to go with Eddie to the race track.  The track was a double lane of asphalt one half mile long, a quarter mile for racing, and another quarter mile for stopping.  It was located at the end of a dirt road, in a pine forest outside of Roxboro, North Carolina.  The pits were unpaved, red Southern dirt, under the pine and sweet gum trees.  On arrival while still in the vehicle, I could hear a primeval roar of racing engines echoing through the trees.  Now as I entertain the memory, I feel an endorphin rush.

Drag racing has been a enduring feature of my life and I am now 67.  In past years I’d visit Great Lakes Dragway two or three times per season.  Yes, there is a muscle and a mystery to drag racing.  It is a composite of ingenuity, physics, engineering, aesthetic sensibility, calculated risk, raw danger, — the melding of man and machine.  Sensuality combined with power.  Drag racing is ragged-edge competition.  It’s not

bowling or golf, or fantasy football.  Guys and sometimes gals, build a machine to the extent of their budget, and their know-how,  to achieve maximum acceleration for 1,320 feet, one quarter mile.  The significance for the driver, and for the crew standing at the starting line, is that of “life-and-death.”  The well being of the driver  is voluntarily placed into the hands of a band-of-brothers who have built the race car to perform to the limit of it’s capability, safely, to the timing lights at the finish line.

Yesterday I stood behind the starting line at the track and contemplatively observed the lined faces of those standing with me.  It was a gathering of old guys.  The insight dawned.  I was one of them.  Time is always moving on, –and so will we.  Cars like this have not been manufactured for years.  There are no more GTOs and in fact, no more Pontiac division of GM.  The world has changed.  Global warming, air quality concerns obligate us to drive vehicles that have cleaner emissions, better gas mileage, etc.  The days are past when a sophomore in high school could work on a street rod in his garage.  Our sons and grandsons relate more immediately to communications technology, than to the air flow rate of a four barrel carburetor.

There is a rhythm to what happens at the track.  Upon arrival the race car is unloaded from the trailer and the crew sets up the pit area.  The car is worked on as necessary to prepare for a test pass or two down the track.  Engines are tuned, to the atmospheric pressure, clutch plate clearances are calibrated on the fuel motors, etc.  There is a rhythm of leisure to the pre-race preparation, a practiced routine.  A crew member or a family member will get the grill fired up to serve a late afternoon dinner.  The tempo increases as your

class is called and the crew tows the car to the staging lanes.  At the conclusion of the tow as the motor comes to life, heart stopping excitement begins.  A ragged exhaust note of horsepower rises as the engine builds heat.  The motor is the beating heart of the machine.  A controlled “burnout” heats the slicks, and the car is staged before the  Christmas tree starting lights.  The competitor in the adjacent lane does not matter.  One thing alone matters:  cutting a quick light, launching the car hard, and keeping it straight to reach the finish line.

The last photo is of a crew working with total focus to prepare a nitro-methane fueler for it’s first run of the day.  This class of car is the king-of-the-track.   Like a god, it requires the ultimate sacrifice of expertise, of judgment, hard labor, and money.  The video clip is 6 seconds depicting the final adjustments being made after the motor has fired.  An idling nitro motor induces pain similar to that when by accident you touch your ear drum with a cue tip.  A blip of the throttle increases the pain to the stab of a knife point into the ear.  I backed away from this scene as clouds of raw nitro blew in my direction,  causing my eyes to sting and water.

More about drag racing in the future…….