The famed “Night Under Fire” is the biggest, baddest, most well attended match race in drag racing and we’d argue that it probably holds that title in overall drag racing history as well. This race is unlike any other on planet Earth with respect to independently produced shows. From gassers and exhibition machines right up to the biggest heroes in the sport, the Night Under Fire is a non-stop cavalcade of action that packs ’em in like none other. This year’s king attraction was a series of match race pairs featuring modern top fuel dragsters trading blows with funny cars, heads up. Back in the day the NHRA ran a special Winston Invitational race where funny cars and dragsters would be run on a slight handicap, giving the floppers the leave and the dragsters would chase. The event was popular and everyone loved it but once Winston was forced out of the sport by government regulations, it went away.
We like the looks of this stuff and even though the dragsters have a performance advantage, the fans seemed to be eating it up. After all, the people there are the only ones that can say they actually saw Force run heads up against Antron Brown or Brittany Force taking on Ron Capps. That is fun stuff and it is the reason that the race packs the track out every year and people have been coming for years and years on end. They have created an amazingly valuable property in the form of this event and frankly it was the impetus for the IHRA’s “Night of Fire” events that were a signature of the Bill Bader era of IHRA control. Those were scaled down versions of this thing. When you see the fireworks that ignite during burnouts and understand that Bob Motz comes and sets that big sign at the starting line on fire every year, you can start to see why this is a show people will pay great money to see. Few tracks have truly signature events. These guys do and it is the biggest and best one in the country.
Dawn Mazi-Hovsepian was on the scene doing her normal bad ass job shooting video and she’s the one who made this clip and tipped us off to it. The sound is awesome and so is the video quality. Because the racers all make clean runs you can truly see how different a funny car and a top fueler perform side by side. Just pay attention to see how much advantage the dragster has right off the hit of the throttle Pretty cool, right?
spectactular, looks like .25 handicap is about right
Such a cool event. Would love to see this. Nothing beats Nitro cars.
Gotta love Force deep staging on the rail, anything to get a leg up! Classic!
I remember watching this back in the 60’s and 70’s, but back then the funny cars had a decent chance against the rails, WOW have times have changed, these modern funny’s don’t even stand a remote chance against these monster rails……….. Ahhh…. progress……….