The remnants of the long closed Las Vegas Speedrome can still be found on the property of the sprawling motorsports complex known as Las Vegas Motor Speedway and its associated tracks. The place was the last major strip in the Vegas area before the opening of the super complex that hosts NASCAR, NHRA, World Of Outlaws, and on and on and on. While it may have been short on super track cush, it was long on fun and as you can see, people showed up to have a good time.
In this video we are at the track with a stick shifted, blown, Corvette competing in the Pro Gas category that would spawn the Super Gas division of NHRA drag racing as it got really, really popular around the country. The cool thing about this deal is that there are not throttle stops and there are cars like this Corvette competing which we kind of fell in love with. The crowd can be seen in multiple shots (beers in hand) cheering on their favorite car as they streak down the track. Theses awesome stuff and while Super Gas is a popular and insanely hard form of drag racing, it lacks the flavor that this era of its birth did.
Big time stuff on tap. Old time stuff to enjoy.
I remember seeing my first Pro Gas race at Byron Dragway back when it was still a new class . 9 second door slammers running heads up was the next best thing to Pro Stock at the time . It was more like a quick 16 class because running 9s in a door car was damn quick back then .
Ah, the good old days. The Super classes may be thrilling for the participants, but for the spectators at a national event it’s several boring hours of dragsters, altereds and ‘vette roadsters lining up for 7, 8 or 9 seconds of RRRRRRBATBATBATRRRRRR and a cloud of brake dust, a race to the bottom. The really sad part of this is that these are some primo machines that oughta be running a class where they could really stretch out and hit some performance numbers. The driving aspect of it could just as easily be accomplished on a computer back in the pits. Oh yeah, the digital LED dial in number plates on these cars just scream “more money than we know what to do with.”
There should be free beer and hot dogs when the Super classes run.
Kinda wacky video, in Northern Ca. Riolo, Torkelson, Bunker, etc. were runnin’ low 8s at that time in P/G. Cool vintage video though.