The big wind down is about ready to begin in the sport of drag racing here in the USA. The NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series concluded yesterday in Las Vegas with the final event in that series, the NMCA and NMRA have packed their tents, the awesome Caltech World Cup Finals were held last weekend in Maryland and the NHRA World Finals are coming this weekend in Pomona, California. The World Street Nationals, Citrus Nationals, and Street Car Supernationals are left on the docket and then we hibernate ever so briefly before the whole deal gets cranking hard again.
The NHRA World finals are going to be pretty awesome this year. The top fuel and funny car battles definitely have the most pitched warfare going on around them with tight points races coming into the final stanza of the 24-race season. Ron Capps or Robert Hight? Steve Torrance or Brittany Force? In pro stock it’ll be a KB car with Greg Anderson, Jason Line, and Bo Butner all ready to scrap it out and in pro stock bike Eddie Kraweic basically has to stage his machine in qualifying and he all but has it knotted up.
This video below was made by a woman named Lauren Adams who works for NHRA. She is an exceptionally talented filmmaker who understands and loves the sport. She gets the people as well and her art is fantastic to watch. She’s going to be making more killer stuff like this and frankly I think this is a ground breaking video for the NHRA. It does not look or feel like anything they have done before. The people are real, the moments are real, and even if you did not know these drivers, it is a compelling watch.
It isn’t about speed, it isn’t about header flames, it is not about national records. It’s about why they’re here and it’s pretty damned awesome.
Anybody except Force cars . Besides needing a ” speaking English for dummies book ” he is a dirty racer and a fucking idiot . His act in front of the camera is fake , old , and tired . One thing I have to give him credit for is he went from nothing and built an empire with other peoples money . But he’s still an idiot .
Phenomenal work done on this piece by Lauren.
That’s a nice video, but I gotta be honest–I don’t care about the drivers. I care about the cars, the technology, the speed and the power. And that’s why I rarely watch drag racing on TV anymore. I can get much better camera work and MUCH more realistic sound on any number of YouTube drag racing channels (check out https://youtu.be/L81jdPbfAkI or https://youtu.be/o_ndds8WUEU, just two of hundreds of examples)–you can almost literally smell the burnouts in these videos. PLUS I don’t have to listen to interviews or agonizingly trite and boring stories about one driver’s inspirational tale or another. We get it–they’re “HEROES.” And that’s exactly the kind of contrived crap that the networks are trying to cram down everyone’s throats, not only in drag racing, but in every other sport. I still love to go to the track–for exactly all of the above reasons–but the TV product just isn’t very exciting anymore (if it ever really was). To quote Frank Zappa, “Shut up and play yer guitar”…