I write this as I am about to hit the sack and get a night’s sleep before heading off to the NMCA World Street Finals at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. We’re going to be live streaming the deal and I’ll be the guy who you’ll be putting on mute from the announcing deck at some point through the proceedings. I’m coming off of a short stop home after a three week sojourn that saw me bouncing back and forth across the country like a crazed, racing obsessed pinball. It was a hell of a run and perhaps one of the most enlightening stretches of my motorsports life as both a journalist and an announcer, although in different ways.

The whole trip reinforced the amazing nature of human beings and motorsports as well as forever ending my skepticism that there are “limits” on anything brilliant people can do even within the confines of a seemingly difficult rulebook. I am of course talking about the continuing incredible performances in the NHRA nitro funny car category along with the stunning and inspiring things I saw people doing at SCTA Bonneville Speed Week 2016. On their face and to people who know nothing of cars or passion, records are meaningless numbers achieved for meaningless purposes in clouds of smoke and the din of clattering noise. To BangShifters and gearheads alike, these are accomplishments to be heralded, to be celebrated, and to be recognized for what they represent. What they represent is achievement. The fact that someone has done something better, faster, or quicker, than anyone in history preceding them is to the true definition of the word awesome.

So where to begin? How about Bonneville. So I came to Bonneville by way of Johnson City, Tennessee. Some of you may know that I’m showing up on the Velocity Channel show Motorhead Garage these days. Well I came from a taping of that after having attended the NHRA race in Kent, Washington. The fact of the matter remains that Bonneville is both an automotive and a spiritual deal. Everything is stripped away outside of the intended purpose of the event. There’s no big money sponsors (there ARE guys with huge money, let’s not forget that), there’s no TV time outs, there’s no great places to sneak off to for a fantastic dinner, no  really easy way to get there, no amenities, and there’s inescapable heat and sun that will literally bake you to death given the chance. What you are left with is a group of racers (450 of them this year) and a load of spectators (4,000 give or take) who are at Bonneville because they have to be there. Something compels you to go there. Virtually everyone who ever says they are going, isn’t. That’s a fact. Given all this information, you get to exist in a perfectly idyllic motorsports bubble for a week. It is a place where everyone is on their own program. It is a place where “doing it wrong” isn’t really a phrase that exists. It is a place where heartbreak outweighs success by many times over but for that reason, it is a place where success means validation of a lifetime full of ideas.

No record is more valuable than the next. I applaud George Poteet and Danny Thompson for their accomplishments and achievements. Neither man has ever claimed their success to be more important than anyone else’s but public perception being what it is, we hear more about the 400mph guys than we do the 105mph guys. My message here is not that the guys setting the 105mph records with a rotary powered Chevy wagon are more important than Thompson and his ilk but rather that both men having equal opportunity to pursue their own individual speed quests is the true magic of Bonneville and Speed Week. Not to get all weird on you here but there is a balance between literally everything on Earth, even racing. For the free-spirited, bucks down, flat-out environment of Bonneville to exist there needs to be something to balance it and that is the world of professional racing where the big dollars are. I keep a foot in both worlds.

I left Bonneville after six glorious days and headed to one of the neatest places on the entire NHRA Mello Yello drag racing series tour, Brainerd, Minnesota. There’s a Paul Bunyan statue outside of town and there’s a bad ass fast race track inside of it. My drag racing pals were really curious about what I had seen and what my favorite stuff was on the salt. It will likely not surprise you that the majority of crewman on the pro teams are hot rodders that have their own stuff at home. Many of them knew about Danny Thompson’s iconic 406mph record and had heard about George Poteet too, but they wanted to know about the hot rods, the belly tankers, and the stuff that didn’t make headlines. I was glad to indulge them. Then they indulged all of us.

The Minnesota air had more magic in it this year after an incredible day of eliminations at Brainerd last year where records were being shattered pass after pass. This year the top fuel mark stood unbroken but the funny car mark was obliterated after Matt Hagan ran 3.822. A record. The quickest funny car pass in history. Quicker than anyone has gone in the entire existence of this class in NHRA competition. A record. A continuance of a trend in funny car performance that has set may of us who follow this stuff close right back in our seats week after week.

An admission. When I was invited to join the NHRA announcing staff a couple of years ago I was both excited and a little deflated. Mostly excited, though. Lingering in the back of my mind was this idea that the age of the stunning performance was over. The age of holding your breath to see what would happen next was done. I was wrong. It has been about records. Exciting, expensive, hard to achieve records. Records that I would argue are worth the same as those achieved on the salt at 105mph or 400mph. Blasphemy you say, right?

Take both down to their core. It is men (and women), it is machines, it is thought, it is precision, it is guts, it is luck, it is a gamble, and it is history on both accounts. The head space is the same even though the environment is different.

If you were to set the exhausted Bonneville racer next to the equally exhausted nitro funny car crewman, each with a cold beer in their hand after making history in their respective classes, do you think those two guys would have a fun conversation? You bet your backside they would and that is the nature of all this stuff. Validation and proving one’s ability in front of the world.

You want to get hung up on a budget, you want to get hung up on a venue, feel free. That ain’t me. I’ll spend my time celebrating with those who make the history wherever it happens and no matter how fast.