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Okay, enough soap-boxing. What I saw at the Rocket City Nationals
has come close to making me born again. I’m feeling
a shade more optimistic than I was a week ago. I feel very
similar to the way I did when the tongues of fire licked over
my head exiting Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1972.
For one thing, my upbeat anticipatory feelings of the past,
have been revived and in a way, that I would’ve said
“utterly impossible” to seven days back. The eighth-mile
CAN BE very much where it’s at, and an acceptable drag
racing future for yours truly. I’m a quarter-snob, I
admit it freely. When you say “drag racing,” you’re
talking 440 yards, 1320 feet, nothing else.
Wrong, it develops.
Saturday night during Huntsville Top Fuel qualifying, I came
to a very quick realization. Vicky Fanning began the show
by pushing Virgil Hartman’s number two car to a solo
3.445, 219.30 (incidentally trivia freaks, the first three-second
run ever on an NHRA measured eighth-mile), and a stunner for
me. I felt the same hit in my chest standing next to a quarter-mile
charge, I felt my eyes widen as the car got off the concrete
with the fire blowing wing high, my eyes watered, my poor
battered nose pulsed like a college kid on poppers, BUT, more
importantly, the run was LONG enough. I shoulda known that.
Your interest is so focused on these pigs that the distance
just about becomes a non-entity. Better still, the fans still
came apart, eating it up, cheering wildly, and this is Vicky
Fanning, not Shirley Muldowney. 3.44 seconds, big damn deal.
Maybe the fans don’t share my prejudices about the numbers
being everything. I just might be wrong. Numbers ARE cool,
but, by God, it IS the experience itself.
A pair later, eventual winner Clay Millican boffed T.J. Zizzo
in a side-by-sider and my education furthered. There is an
issue in the eighth. That same side-by-side thrill that a
fan gets, for me, thrives alive and well, in 660 feet. The
races appear closer, and because of the distance no more of
those oildowns. Oildowns minimized? That means costs have
the potential to be Jenny Craig-ed into sanity. After just
one 8-car Top Fuel eighth-mile qualifying session, my little
racing globe got a big dent in it.
I’m like a number of my veteran fuel friends ….
300-mph and beyond. When are we going to see a 4.39. Hey,
maybe not. Given the state of things what with Darrell’s
Russell’s tragic passing and the tire beef, I AM more
than willing to argue for eighth mile national events.
Two reasons as to why.
Realistically, and I think NHRA has more than picked up on
this, most race tracks (4,000 to 4,200 feet roughly) are not
going to be able to contain a potential 350-mph race car safely.
However, as racing history shows, you can’t legislate
performance out of existence, either. The Alan Johnsons and
the Austin Coils get blood lust when you say something can’t
be performed by these monsters. They will always be able to
work around the rules. Fuel crew chiefs are natural born killers,
and the main reason why the nitro drags kick butt. Things
just get faster, but an eighth-mile distance will give them
a lot of future room to innovate and entertain. The quarter
has just about shot its wad. Nitro ET racing would totally
suck.
Just look at recent racing history. 85-percent and ONLY 336-mph.
Eventually NHRA or IHRA will have to throw in the towel, and
just get off the mechanical schneid and say, anybody who runs
335-mph BREAKS out, as in you lose. And, of course, that flies
in the face of the genesis of this sport. What I said at the
beginning, for an awful lot of us the anticipation of what
we’d see in the future hooked us like crack park junkies.
NASCAR didn’t go through that kind of growth, but drag
racing did. They’ve had governors on the cars for decades.
Not our lovable psychos. Who builds the bigger bomb? Is it
quicker and faster? No, then make it that way.
Prior to the Rocket City Nationals, I thought, “Hey,
eighth-mile, why not? Tee-hee, I suppose it beats tennis and
golf.” This race spoke to me the same way George Howard
opened a lot of remarks, “Let me explain somethin’
to you.”
Eighth-mile drag racing is something I will pay out of my
own pocket to see, especially fuel. As the Burkster enthused
to me, “Where is it written in stone that drag racing
has to always be quartered?” I mean Americans traded
in their Cadillacs for Corollas, and Bush actually found blacks
against affirmative action. Anything’s possible. Think
about it, Mike Kloeber and Lance Larsen got their beater to
pop a 3.18, and anyone connected has seen the incrementals
and knows these cars are teasing the twos. You mean to tell
me you can’t sell two-second, 280-mph race cars in a
venue where the whole race can be seen in its entirety. I
refuse to believe that the eighth will elevate the costs even
to the level they are now. I think it will also be safer.
Not only that, but current facilities can easily accommodate
our madmen for another decade at least with no limits. That’s
why I’m into the eighth. I’m willing to be wrong
on this, but consider the above.
Eighth-mile racing, how about a try out? I’m, for the
moment, won over. Anything to bring back expectancy, innovation
and amp up the heartbeat.
As for the quarter-mile, I’ll side with the Rolling
Stones … “Let It Bleed” … to death.
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