As we continue to bring you the best in Quarantine entertainment, we’re taking a trip back to the middle 1960s and we’re landing in Southern California. On this trip we’re taking together we are going to hang out with a young top fuel racer named Rick Stewart. He’s a young guy like so many others with more horsepower than he has ever had, more speed than he could have ever dreamed of making, and an obsession with the world of drag racing that would stay with him his whole life.

If Stewart’s name is familiar it’s because he was the NHRA chief starter for years. Stewart was the guy throwing the switch on the tree between the funnies, fuelers, pro stockers, and all manner of other equipment as well. He didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. He’s been around the sport for decades in a multitude of roles and in this case was playing the role of lead in a film about his own life.

This is one of the most honest, open, and awesome drag racing documentary films ever made because it follows Stewart’s story without interrupting it. This is not a hero piece, this is real and it’s so freaking cool to see, not the slanted memories of people from 50 years ago but the actual way it was. This is good and bad and you’ll see it all here.

This video will also illustrate why Don Garlits’ Swap Rat 14 was such a revolutionary piece of iron. The horrors of high-speed trouble in a front-engine dragster are shown here in better detail and drama than just about anywhere else. Between being blasted with oil and then effectively being bathed in fire, Stewart lived out one of the true nightmares of this type of racing.

You can also see what happened to slingshot dragsters of this era when they crashed and what little is left of them after things go bad. The scene of the guys loading the remains of the car into a pickup truck and some chunks on the trailer is a rough reminder about how ragged edge these days were.

Make sure you watch this film all the way to the end. Why? Because when the poop stops hitting the fan in the most stunning moment, you can here a slightly perturbed guy saying in a strangely calm voice for the circumstances, “Get me outta here pal,” it’s Stewart, illustrating why he had the nickname, “The Iceman.”

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE STEWART AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS TOP FUEL CAREER –