(Photo by Charles Wickam) – It takes a veritable village to run a high power drag car like one of the entries in the ADRL’s Pro Extreme or Pro Nitrous class. Those 2,000+hp beasts don’t tune themselves up or do much of anything else without the skillful help of an entire crew. People unfamiliar with drag racing wonder why you need so many people at the starting line with certain types of cars. As this photo illustrates, you need them because people sometimes lose stuff and the more eyes there are, the better. After all, a quick prayer to St Anthony only goes so far when there is a race car angrily snorting at you with thousands of horsepower.
Of course that last paragraph was a bunch of hooey. Those crew members all have jobs whether it is to help backing the car up, turning on the nitrous bottles, removing the pin from the parachute, etc. There really is a need for a fistful of people to get one of these cars off the starting line.
That being said, check out this Charles Wickam image from the 2012 ADRL Dragapalloza event which was just run last weekend at Royal Purple Raceway in Baytown, Texas and caption it or tell us what exactly everyone in the frame is looking for!
Smoke came out from under the front of the car and those guys swarmed on it.
‘Don’t recall if the car was able to make a pass…
Looks like we found the neighbors cat.
“looks like we found the neighbors cat,” This cracks me up!!! I can’t stop laughing!!!
“Why yes, I believe that is the crankshaft laying on the ground”
Hey, we found Waldo!
“I’m tellin’ ya’, I won’t race until I find my lucky rabbit’s foot!”
How could you loose the keys man !?
I know it takes a crew to run these 6 second cars. But it’s getting frustrating at the races when guys feel they need 6 guys to line up their 13 second street car. Guys backing them up in their tracks, two guys fanning the doors like it’s the Pro Stock finals. You don’t have to do everything you see on ESPN.
you idiot, you ran over the starter, now we don’t have anybody to start the xmas tree.
I put my beer in that ice chest with all the cooling pipes connected inside here, can I have that back?
“Boss said we just need to find another 50 horsepower, and we’ll win our class!”
Man, I needed that quarter for the Coke machine!
Really?!? C’mon guys! This is the lousiest place to have a chinese fire drill.
The infamous Toyota engineering (theft) team caught on super slow motion.
In a moment of total situational awareness fail, the moonlighting NASCAR pit crew slid into action and started changing tires and refueling the car as if it were 5 to go at Daytona. The ADRL was not amused.
Hey! Do you think we can get this one to blow up like the one in Abu Dahbi???