Another day at the Races 8/8/99

Note: This page contains several links to QuickTime movies at the NHRA official site.  You can see several movies from this year's Sears Point event at: http://www.nhraonline.com/events/1999/race15/multimedia/multimedia.html,

and a large library of QT movies from all 1997, 1998, and 1999 events at their multimedia site: http://www.nhraonline.com/events/1999/multimedia.html

Yesterday, for the third year in a row, we attended the Autolite Nationals at Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, Ca.

Not much new to report, cf "Festival of Fire." If you want the winners (determined today from a field of 16 top qualifiers from Friday and yesterday), point standings in the annual NHRA totals, or individual records for ETs (elapsed times in the quarter-mile) and speeds, see the NHRA page for the event.

When I first wrote about this, the story was mostly about nostalgia -- times my dad had taken me to the races in the 60s -- and the visceral thrill of seeing a monstrous machine take off from a standing start, in an explosion of noise and speed.

That was the Festival of Fire. The fastest cars at that event -- and I use the term "car" loosely -- are the Federal Mogul dragsters, clocking in at 250 mph and maybe 5.5 seconds.

When you get to the national event, you're looking at considerably faster and quicker machinery. The top fuel dragsters and funny cars routinely do the quarter mile, from a standing start, in under five seconds, and over 300 mph. I think we saw 4.65s and 315s. (QuickTime movie of Bob Vandergriff running a 4.55 Friday at NHRA site.)

Sears Point has a new "launching pad" this year, and the weather was considerably cooler than in previous years, so we were treated to the fastest and quickest runs we've seen in our meager three years of spectating.

The regular drags have sort of paled. I like 'em well enough; the FM dragsters and funnies are still a big thrill, and still loud enough for earplugs, but man! Those nitro-burners are in another league. We were standing by the fence for the first runs Saturday, and it took three or four of 'em before I stopped automatically flinching back from the fence when they roared by.

You see the lights go down, and you hear the backwards echo of the sound from the speakers before the real sound reaches you, a hundred times louder. They were standing still; now they are moving. Towards you. At well over 100MPH. They're doing over 250 by half-track (that's an eighth of a mile, or 660 feet). If you are not wearing earplugs, you can actually feel your eardrums flattening against whatever it is in there they flatten against. And in your chest, you feel something like the concussion wave from a serious bomb blast.

I've come to understand a little more of what's involved in piloting one of these things. You think, just get in, floor it when the light turns green, keep it straight, and shut it down at the end. Right? Well, no. These guys are riding out on the edges of the laws of physics.

They deal with "tire shake," where the pavement rebels against the force of the drive wheels. As the announcer said (paraphrased here), "you go to the hardware store, take one of those gallon paint cans, put your head in it, and put it in one of those paint-shaker things."

They deal with "smoking the tires"; again, where the rubber isn't meeting the road on equal terms, and you're getting some slippage under one or both back wheels, and you're going a direction you hadn't planned on, very quickly indeed.

In a dragster, they deal with the front wheels rising off the ground and continuing into a "blowover" if they don't make a correction (QuickTime at NHRA). And if they keep it from blowing over, the whole front end can get skewed on landing. I saw one dragster throw a front wheel some thirty feet in the air, like a lethal frisbee; leaving the driver entirely powerless to direct the vehicle in any particular direction. I saw another come down from a wheelie so hard that the right rear tire came off the ground. When there's 6000 horsepower behind that left tire still connecting, where are you going next?

In a funny car, they deal with the engine spattering hot oil back at them.

On a hot track, they deal with "squiggly" pavement, sending the vehicle towards parts unknown as the asphalt undulates beneath the tires.

They deal with 5 or more Gs on takeoff, and negative 5 on reentry.

On top of it all, if everything goes right, they deal with going over 300 MPH on a 30-foot-wide track, covering 1320 feet in 4 and a half seconds.

ANYthing goes wrong, at that speed, you are in serious trouble, even with a detachable driver cage, even in flame-retardant layers of clothing, helmet, and cute little racing shoes.

We saw a funny car blow the entire back of the body off, leaving a flaming snowmobile (thanks, T! xoxoxo!) sliding past the finish line sideways at about 150 MPH (Quicktime at NHRA).

We see the funny cars after every burnout, lifting their hatches to let the tire smoke escape in great billows from a completely clouded cabin.

In many races, you can see a replay from an onboard camera (Quicktime at NHRA). If nothing else convinces you that this is a sport of reflexes, finesse, and sheer wet-your-pants exertion, just take a look at that sometime, and note the narrow tunnel of view, and the speed of the scenery traveling past.

Continually, I get the feeling that this is not even a safe sport to sit and WATCH, much less participate in.

But when they get a perfect run, you somehow know it. It's a matter of a half a second difference between a good and a bad run, but you know it as the car thunders past when it's a good one. And when both cars get a good one, like when Bazemore got a 4.93 and Force a 4.94, side by side (Quicktime at NHRA)... Now THAT was a good run! And we knew it when they passed us at half track. We'd seen, and felt, and heard, and smelled, something so exquisite, so finely-tuned, so exhilarating, it left us cheering like maniacs, gasping for breath, and feeling somehow more alive.

On the salt flats at Bonneville, the land speed record folks tool their jet-cars for 700 MPH runs. I'd like to see that someday. But y'know, those guys are playing a softer game, with their flying miles, than the athletes (and I use that term without sarcasm now) in these brightly-painted, mind-boggling, ground-shaking, eardrum-splitting, skull-shattering machines.