Sensory overload
Want to go drag racing? Bring sunscreen, earplugs, a neck brace,
and maybe even some kleenex
You can hear the thunder from literally a mile away. The ground's
shaking, and the windows of the car are rattling even as you make the
turn off highway 3 onto 27. There's a cloud of dense smoke visible in
the distance, and occasionally, a shriek rips through the air like
some kind of caged animal.
As you drive closer, the smoke gets thicker and the noise gets
louder; you can hear individual thumps, roars, screams, and what
sound like gunshots. Then a sound not unlike some kind of military
jet on full afterburner, blasting off and then quickly fading into
the distance.
Then a cheer goes up through the crowd, and you stop worrying.
It's not Jurassic Park gone mad; it's a drag race.
Six hours later, I'm standing out by the track, camera in hand,
trying to catch a glimpse as six-time NHRA Winston champion John
Force is strapped into his Castrol GTX Mustang-bodied funny car. It's
way off at the end of the starting grid, and I can barely make out
the crew's faces as they shuffle around the car, checking readings,
making minor adjustments to the engine, and bringing the body down
over the driver and his impossibly big six-thousand horsepower
engine.
One of the track officials starts running down towards myself and
the other journalists that are standing around in a tangle, waving us
back behind the fence where we belong. "Nobody's to stand in front of
the tower," he yells over the deafening noise of the car roaring to
life behind him. "Get back!"
We get back, standing on tables, and sometimes even on each other,
as Force and Tom Hoover, the driver beside him in his
Pioneer-sponsored car, rev their huge engines and disappear in a
cloud of smoke. Once it clears, we can see the cars again: they're
more than halfway down the racetrack, as if they have been teleported
there by some kind of alien force. The engines turn over and crackle,
grumbling discontentedly as the cars back up to the starting line,
their tires now properly warm. It has been a good show for the crowd,
and they're ready for a race.
The two cars stage, lining up so that their front wheels are
between the two optical "eyes" that define the race's starting line.
Two yellow lights come on to tell them that they're ready, and the
engines roar once again. The bodies of the cars twitch in
anticipation, but they don't move. First two amber, and then one
green light, shows in each of the lanes. And then&emdash;
It's as if an earthquake has rocked the racetrack. Despite the
plugs in my ears, the noise is incredible, and my whole spine
vibrates as the two cars roar off. They're through the eighth-mile
marker in about two and a half seconds; I've snapped a picture, but
it's probably of just bare track. There's no tire smoke; smoking the
tires wastes precious time.
Then Force's car catches on fire. While it's still going
two-hundred-plus mph (the final reading on the scoreboard indicates
258,) it's as if his whole car has been possessed. Parachutes
deployed, it grinds to a halt, smoke pouring out of it. His crew,
which has been poised at the starting line since the beginning, is
already racing down to the other end of the track, one of them
struggling to pull his door shut as the big white Ford Expedition
pulls away.
And there I am, standing and wondering if it was my fault that I
had asked him for an autograph instead of letting him go back to
work.
I arrived at the Castrol Can-Am Nationals at London Motorsports
Park thinking that drag racing had to be the most
neandrathal-mindless sports that a driver could put their car
through&emdash;after all, what it comes down to is lofting your
vehicle through the quarter-mile in the lowest possible elapsed time
and at the highest speed. Simple, right?
Yes and no. While the concept of drag racing itself is just so
delightfully simple, there are many more facets to it than I ever
expected. A whole range of vehicles was on hand, from the expected
funny cars and dragsters, to the other classes, where I saw Ford
Escorts and Dodge Omnis tromp their way through the quarter, drivers
cheering when they pulled in under twenty seconds; where I saw kids
race each other through the eighth-mile in NHRA junior dragsters;
where immaculately prepared and maintained classic hot rods duked it
out with nitrous-injected pickups; where all terrain vehicles and
even snowmobiles went up against each other and the clock; where
jet-powered cars spat flames and ate asphalt. There really was
something there for everyone.
Of course, drag racing has also long meant professional teams such
as Force's, who with Tony Pedregon, runs out of a set of three
immaculate parts- and electronics-filled tractor-trailers pulling
eighty thousand pounds each, never mind the bus that carries all of
the crew.
Drag racing is big business, too. Force estimates that to be
competitive&emdash;and he knows something about that, he and Pedregon
having won 91% of all of their 40 events in the past
year&emdash;takes a budget of two or three million dollars per car.
And for a team like his with two cars, the budget doubles to
something like six million dollars a year.
It's also a world of big corporate sponsorships. A joint venture
with Castrol, Force's trailer setup is a technological wonder with
its own satellite to track weather systems, and dozens of TVs built
into its outside walls to run Castrol and Mac Tools commercials all
day at the crowd as they gather around its elevated rear balcony for
autographs (it's elevated off the ground for the crowds to better see
him; it also has an elevator to bring the wheelchairs of his many
disabled fans up to him.) The sponsorships in this sport are so
important, in fact, that at the back of his second trailer is an
expandable walkthrough "museum" of drag racing
memorabilia&emdash;alongside of information about his sponsors and
their products.
Despite the commercialism, walking through the Force trailers is
an incredible experience; they're filled with the latest high-tech
gadgets, from workstations with two Pentium computers and six
monitors each, to the doppler-radar weather system that hooks
directly into the laptops that the crew chiefs use to program the
engines. (Force claims that having his own weather station on-board,
and his ability to make adjustments to the engine based on the
weather station's information, is responsible for much of his
competitive edge.)
Earlier in the day, I&emdash;and twenty-one other
journalists&emdash;had a chance to find out what drag racing really
felt like. After a ride around the track with, and being shown the
basics by, four drivers who would be competing later in the evening,
we got to loose ourselves on the scarred asphalt of London
Motorsports ourselves, in almost comically unequal pairings of
Fords&emdash;the Escort that I drove on my first run out was paired
against a V-8 Crown Victoria, and a Contour was matched against an
Explorer.
Tom Hoover, the driver who would later witness up-close the Force
incident, was my tutor for the day. Joking about the Escort's lack of
power, especially in comparison to the Crown Vic to the right of us,
he was still bubbling with enthusiasm. "It's the most fun thing in
the world," he told me. "Even in a crappy little car like this, just
to take it all the way down the racetrack is a thrill."
And so it is. In my first run, the Crown Vic miraculously jumps
the gun; I win the race by default, with a quarter-mile time of 19.20
seconds. I'm sitting on top of the world.
In a later run, I'm in the Explorer; somehow, the Crown Vic has
been switched with the Contour and is still there. I'm alone this
time, and trying to keep the admittedly sparse directions straight.
Roll up to the line; creep until you see both staging lights. Brake.
Rev up the engine. Wait for green. Stomp.
My reaction time's way off, just over a second&emdash;thankfully,
the Vic's is too, at something like 0.9. I have a lead all the way up
to the eighth-mile point, but the big car gains on me and eventually
wins the race by 0.4 second&emdash;though I have the higher terminal
speed. I'm half-dejected, half-elated. Dejected that I lost, of
course, and by such a close margin, but elated because I've beat the
best time that Pedregon has set in the Explorer&emdash;he was able to
do an 18.20, and I've pulled a 17.76.
Elated too by how much fun I've had. Hoover was right; no matter
what kind of vehicle you're driving, just to drop the hammer and push
it to its limits is a thrill. "No speeding tickets on a racetrack,
either," another driver tells me. Maybe now I understand the old guy
in his rusted-out Eighty-Eight, the kids, and even the snowmobile.
The announcement comes just as the lights on the racetrack and up
in the control tower switch on. "John Force is out of the car and is
OK. He just wanted his kids to know that he's OK." The crowd cheers,
hoots, hollers, whistles: the guy that walked through the aisles and
signed their autographs and bounced their babies is still alive.
A more ominous announcement. "Anyone with a tilt-and-load truck is
asked to call the control tower as soon as possible please." Force's
car, the news comes, has suffered some severe damage, and can't be
rolled back. I look down to the other end of the track, and there are
still fire trucks and ambulances there, lights flashing. I can't see
much else; it's getting close to nine-thirty, and then sun's almost
all the way down.
Another few minutes pass; the publicity crew tries desperately to
hold on to the increasingly distressed crowd by staging mini-game
shows for racing memorabilia; for the most part they're successful,
and even manage to get the two sides shouting at each other
boisterously.
The noise quickly fades, though, as Force's car is towed back to
the pits. It has no body anymore, and the gleaming frame and
immaculately painted parts that I saw earlier on the tour are all
covered in a deep, light-absorbent layer of soot. The engine looks in
particularly bad shape, the big supercharger mangled and blackened.
The seat has been burned.
The body comes next&emdash;it's on the back of a tilt-and-load, so
I assume that they've found one. The red, white and green colors, so
brilliant just a while before, are almost completely obscured, and
the hood looks like a missile's been shot through it, and has taken a
part of the windshield with it. A similar blowout seems to have taken
the rear end of the car, which is missing most of its paint, and a
large chunk of fiberglass.
Finally, a small, aerodynamic golf cart comes through the jumble
and lets out Force. He gives a thumbs-up to a highly appreciative
crowd, explains that the blower backfired, and proceeds to joke
around with the track announcer. He'll be back tomorrow, he promises;
it's what the fans want to hear.
Nothing&emdash;not the power, not the speed, not the smoke and not
the noise&emdash;impressed me more at the Can-Am Nationals as did the
absolute loyalty and devotion of the fans. Everybody I've met out in
the stands can rattle off Force statistics at the drop of a hat. I'm
accosted by two guys on the way to the parking lot who want to borrow
my press pass so they too can have the limited-edition John Force
poster and cap, items that until then I hadn't thought of as
particularly special. One of them knows what kind of beer he likes to
drink, when he likes to drink it, and how much he likes to drink. I
wonder later if I was being insensitive, telling him I didn't care
about how much beer John drinks. I wonder if I should have lent them
my pass.
Out in the parking lot, there are dozens of campers clustered
around the blue porta potties, fans who have come from as far as
Minnesota just to see him, just to see the cars. Off in the distance,
I can see a campfire burning, a family getting ready for bed
underneath the gasoline- and smoke-stained sky. I wonder if I could
ever travel that far, pay the seventy-five bucks for a camping spot,
just to see my racing idol for what was eventually less than six
seconds, and decide that no, I couldn't.
But as I drive out, there they are, ten or twenty deep around
Force's trailers. Watching the noisy repairs being made in an awed
sort of silence, reverently fingering the scorched body, trying to
catch a glimpse of him, praying that tomorrow, everything will be all
right.