10/11/04

Let's Ban The Burnout

Jeff Burk Photo

Remember when race cars got faster and the show got slower? Now that the subject of slowing down the fuel cars is getting serious debate by racers and rulesmakers, let's do something about speeding up the show.

Entertainment and media experts have long insisted that the optimum length for any recreational activity is three hours. This is one reason for NASCAR's popularity, particularly among "television fans." The unique case of contemporary drag racing -- with its multiple pro categories and multiple days of qualifying, plus eliminations -- obviously doesn't fit this formula. That's not to say it never has, however, as anyone who attended San Fernando Raceway can confirm.

Surrounded by homes and adjacent to a church with a cranky minister, the infamous Frog Pond was forced to contend with a Sunday noise curfew so restrictive that entire eight-car Top Fuel, Top Gas and Little Eliminator shows -- qualifying plus eliminations -- were completed between 12:30 and 3:30 p.m. Not only that, but trophy winners in a couple of dozen "uncorked" classes (Altered, Dragster, Gas, Modified Production, Modified Sports) were also determined during that three-hour span. What a live-TV show THAT would've made on Sunday afternoons!

Saturday-night strips such as Lions were more fortunate, offering virtually unlimited numbers of qualifying runs during afternoon hours.  Nevertheless, eliminations in multiple feature categories were run off in three to four hours. Most fans arrived not long before the national anthem, and were back on the San Diego Freeway by 11 o'clock. They didn't need six or seven hours of entertainment then, and they sure don't need to sit on hard seats for more than three or four hours now.

Among all of the contributing factors that combined to stretch national events into all-day marathons in the late 1970s and 1980s, perhaps none is more responsible nor less necessary than the burnout. What started out as a beneficial spin through the resin on slippery, asphalt starting lines in the mid-Sixties has become a time-consuming ritual that hurts parts, wears tires, wastes fuel and does little, if anything, to enhance the traction of a modern launch pad.

I only suspected as much prior to interviewing the only two fuel racers I know to have experimented with and without burnouts:  AA/FD-veteran Jimmy Boyd, who almost never does a burnout in his low-buck nostalgia slingshot; and Jim Head, who made a couple of dozen no-burnout passes during his 1992 NHRA Top Fuel campaign.

Although Boyd has never enjoyed the luxury of a testing budget, he has been tuning and driving front-motored fuelers longer than almost anybody on the planet -- while spending less money than virtually anybody, anywhere. When asked a few years ago, he couldn't say whether he was giving up any performance by waiting for his opponents to back up from their burnouts before firing his iron Chrysler, then driving around the water box and directly to the starting line. What he did know was exactly how much money he was saving in nitromethane, tires and repairs. For example, Boyd claimed that a weekend of smoky burnouts inflicted roughly the same amount of wear on his supercharger as the actual passes -- forcing him to restrip the rotors nearly twice as often. Given the chance to run an extra event or two in the course of a season, he decided that giving up burnouts was a small price to pay.

"What I learned from infrared-temperature testing was that the burnout does little to heat up the tire," recalled Head. "I guarantee you that it does not heat up the race track! To this day, I don't think we need to do 'em. We've all seen guys who fail to smoke the tires on the burnout set Low ET, after screwing up."

Told of Jimmy Boyd's supercharger experience, Head said, "I have to rotate and restrip blowers every two to three runs. Frequently, engines do get hurt on burnouts. Mine last two and a half to three seconds, at 5600 to 6100 rpm. It's like a dyno pull. So there is some wear, sure.  The tires definitely get thinner, and what you want for traction is a thick tire."

"I was gonna quit doing 'em at national events," Head added, chuckling, "but I knew the sanctioning bodies would kill me. I shortened 'em up for a long time in my dragsters. I do think they're here to stay, because of the show. The people seem to love 'em."

How much do we love 'em, exactly? This old fan would gladly give them up for a qualifying or eliminations show that's one hour shorter. I always preferred the back-to-back action of the 1960s, when two fuel cars were firing as the previous pair cleared the lights. Plus, burnouts are boring and repetitive on television, while chewing up far more time than the racing. 

Pro Stockers, Comp cars and Pro Mods could keep boiling their balonies; they need every advantage to compete for attention with the faster, noisier fuel cars. Because these burnouts are shorter and more precise, comparatively little time is wasted backing up or making late adjustments. Fans could still go home with their nose hairs, lungs and T-shirts coated in molten rubber.