I don’t know if it’s just me, but the one takeaway I remember from watching tractor and sled pulls on television back in the late 1980s was that everything that hitched up to the weight would eventually hike the front wheels into the air as if it was struggling to climb that last lifesaving inch up a mountain in vain. We look back to vehicles from then, including Lynn Lucken’s 1988 Lincoln Mark VII (no, seriously!) and then we look to today’s vehicles: diesel 4x4s that dig in with all four tires scrambling for any purchase, and of course the Unlimited category where alcohol Hemis and turbines rule supreme.

In the 2WD categories, hanging the hoops is normal. In four-wheel-drive classes, that’s not as easy. But we aren’t going to concern ourselves with the ins and outs of the wheelstand. We’re just going to let you check out a few big-boy trucks and watch as the drivers angle upwards for a nice view of the moonlight in Virginia. Maybe one of them was trying to find Comet NEOWISE somewhere in the stars, who knows?