As I type these words, the big-boy dragsters are making their laps down Gateway Motorsports Park, rattling the bleachers and leaving Chad a very happy human. Watching the drivers launch down the track reminds me of being a young, relatively hairless little McTag back in 1988, watching racing on TNN and asking anyone who was within earshot what I would need to do in order to be the guy in the helmet, crammed into a rail with that didn’t have so much an engine, but rather a dragon’s heartbeat, one that breathed flames high into the air. Nobody could give me a solid answer…instead, their suggestions of doctor, lawyer, or public service worker of nobility (like a firefighter) were offered up instead. That may or may not have been the weekend I ganked the keys to my aunt’s Cobra II and tried to drive off, but as I age that section of memory becomes more and more hazy.
What is cool to see, thirty years on from that point in time, are kids in Junior Dragsters that are just as involved as every adult racing today is. Young ladies and gentlemen are lining up in wicked little machines that provide them with a great chance to practice and enhance their skills at the Christmas tree and the strip in general. Watching a couple of the drivers up close provided me with the chance to see the driver and crew working together like any other series. These young ones take their driving role as seriously as anyone in Super Comp or 7.0 Index and will have a leg up when they make the move out of the smaller Junior and into something a little more potent!
Click on a photo below to check out this gallery, and if you missed our last gallery from SCSN V at Gateway Motorsports Park, CLICK HERE!
