Yes, there are top fuel cars in Japan. Yes, they get run. No they don’t prep the tracks…at all. Why? People we have spoken to told us that prepping the track is viewed as “cheating” in Japan. We kind of admire that masochistic attitude.

There’s a faction of people here in the USA that think the ticket to slowing down nitro cars at NHRA National events and adding more excitement to the class is to take all the track prep away. Well, these videos will give you a good education on exactly what that will look like. Filmed at Fuji Speedway, these runs were made during different drag events held at the facility. It seems like it could be the same car wrapped a couple different ways, but it sure gets the point across. We should note that Fuji is a road course that is used for drag events like Hockenheim in Germany, but the country does have dedicated strips.

Now we’ll say this, it sure looks majestic and it would put the drivers front and center because every run would be an epic pedal fest to get to the finish. The tire companies may have an issue with this program though as you’ll see. They’d like the fact that on every pass a team is essentially cooking a pair of expensive hoops, but it would take one low budget team pushing their slicks one run too many for an explosive disaster to take place. The clutch companies probably wouldn’t be into it unless teams figured out how to slip them to the point that they were wasting discs and floaters on every run. In that case, profits would soar and they’d need to add shifts at the plant!

This is almost like time travel back to the days before slipper clutches and soft tires but with modern cars. Do you dig it? Would it be cool to see two drivers pedaling their junk like bicyclists? Would motors hydraulic on every pass? So many questions and soooo much smoke! Watch and learn!