To date, the wildest event that I’ve attended since I was brought on to write for BangShift was a diesel race that devolved into a burnout contest so wild that the owner of the track rolled up in person and started threatening police action. We’re talking ruts dug into the asphalt, burning brakes, burning engines, tire bits flung for days, fifth-gear burnouts at wide open kinds of mental. With tons of torque and quite a bit of beef to the engine, the built turbodiesel is the replacement for the big-cube big block engine. No Buick could match some of the trucks that you will see here. You can make every farm boy quip you’ve got, but if “letting off a little steam” means nuking the hides, what’s the harm, really?
We dug up this footage of the burnout contest at the NHDRA Desert Nationals held out at the now-closed Speedworld Raceway in Wittmann, Arizona, a track that has been quiet for years now and is slowly being reclaimed back into the desert. Before politics put an end to the fun, Speedworld was a ball of a place and as you will see, pretty much anything went so long as it was done safely. It’s just some fun to cap off a decent round of racing, and these guys let it hang out to be seen.
