Antron Brown has won at the final event of NHRA’s Western Swing the last three years and is hoping that continues this week at Pacific Raceways. In fact, he hasn’t won an event since last year’s Northwest Nationals.

“Seattle is the end of the Swing and we always look forward to going there,” Brown said. “It’s a sea-level track, it gets a little warm and it’s one of those places that really suits the way we like to race. The track can get a little tricky with the sun on it, but we always seem to navigate it well and we have plenty of notes we can look back on. We can really make our car perform at the level it needs to be.”

His team has been close to a victory all season and Brown currently sits second in points.

“We’ve been growing and growing, but it’s going to take everything we’ve got for all of our hard work to finally come to fruition at Seattle,” Brown said. “I think that’s why we always do well there, because we know that’s the race where the switch always has to be on. It’s got to come on by then. We’ve got to race hard to win every round from here on out and finish strong.”  (Ron Lewis photo) [07/31/19]

The new Oberto Specialty Meats logo will make its debut on the hood of the Jim Dunn Racing Funny Car driven by Jim Campbell at Pacific Raceways during the NHRA national event this weekend.

“This fall we will launch a broad range of delicious new products, new packaging to celebrate our Seattle heritage, and improved products from our core business,” said Stephen Oberto, Vice President of Marketing and fourth generation Oberto. “Furthermore, we will be expanding our portfolio to include charcuterie and sausages, the same specialty meats our company was built on 101 years ago.”

The brand, founded in 1918 by Constantino Oberto and once delivered around the Seattle area by Art Oberto on his bicycle, will be expanding their product line and introducing new packaging.  [07/31/19]

The viewership stats for the Sonoma NHRA Nationals shown on FOX were 671,000 viewers with a 0.43 rating for the two-hour broadcast. The highest rated motorsport program on Sunday was the NASCAR Cup series race from Pocono, PA, with 2,705,000 viewers and a 1.71 rating.   [07/31/19]

Electric vehicles may be the future for the driving public, but they won’t be allowed to drag race at Texas Motor Speedway until they are safer.

The UTI Friday Night Drags at the track has decided to ban electric vehicles (EV) from competing in the bracket event because of concern over uncontrollable battery fires. The track simply does not have the specific equipment required to suppress lithium-ion battery fires. Regular fire-suppression equipment cannot handle the problem.

Should a lithium-ion cell be punctured in an accident and go up in flames, emergency crews face the possibility of the vehicle re-igniting for up to 48 hours after the initial event occurred. Because of this, it has become an increasingly common procedure to submerge EVs in vats of water following a fire for 24 hours or more to prevent conditions such as thermal runaway.

For those of you interested in electric drag racing, check out the National Electric Drag Racing Association.   [07/31/19]

The latest in a rapidly expanding line of superchargers, these Hard Black Anodized BDS 871 blowers are 100% manufactured in the USA by Blower Drive Service. Billet case and rotors along with other components are new, not remanufactured, and remain highly rated superchargers for high performance street machines, bracket racing, marine and other “dirty environment” applications. BDS CNC machines their cases, end plates, rotors, drive components, etc., in house from solid billet aluminum. Blower assemblies are available in either hard anodized in “Black Out” hard anodize as shown here or fully polished. In Stage 1 form they are capable of 12-15 pounds of boost using pump fuel (stage 1 available in cast case only.) Stage II pushes that to 15 pounds and more on engines using high octane fuel, turning in excess of 7500 RPM. For details on the entire line of 471, 671, 871, 1071 and 1471 BDS blowers, EFI and other high-performance components visit www.blowerdriveservice.com  [07/31/19]