(Photo credit: NMCA/Steve Baur) – No, as best I understand there are no plans for any sanctioning body to release a “steam outlaw” class in the near or distant future but I did recently have an interesting experience watching some of the most incredible drag race cars I have ever seen go to work on small tires while I was reading a book on the history of the steam engine. While small tire drag racing will never have the overt impact on life that the development and implementation of the steam engine did, both the steam engine and the performance of full bodied cars followed an interesting and well worm developmental path. The steam engine’s refinement in England happened not just because of the resources and specific needs of that country at that time but really because of the cultural environment that existed which encouraged “regular” people to invent, innovate, and create. For centuries before the Industrial Revolution, it was rich guys and the supported friends of rich guys that actually had time to conceive and invent stuff.
When patent law became a “thing” and there was an understanding that people had the right to own their ideas as much as they did physical property, the world changed. It was something that changed the way empirically thinking people operated from that point in history forward in the western world. Now blacksmiths and carpenters could come up with clever ideas and apply them, perhaps with the end result being riches. More often than not it was failure and obscurity but the home runs did come and the incremental creation of the steam engine was one of those things. From their use as massive stationary mine pumps to finally being mounted onto a chassis and used for propulsion on the famed Rocket locomotive, it is an amazing process to look back over history and watch.
Such is the same with small tire drag racing and having seen some of the best in the world first had last weekend at the NMCA race in Florida, these guys are doing things that seems to bend the very laws of physics that the world functions on. The truly endearing thing is that they are doing it without the names of big companies slathered up and down the sides of their cars and (for the most part) as small business owners/operators. In short, these guys are doing what those blacksmiths and carpenters did hundreds of years ago when they applied their empirical knowledge of the world in whatever way they could.
I am one of the guys who loves drag racing on any level and at any speed. I think the sport needs as many cars, classes, and organizations as it can possibly support so in no way am I taking a shot at anyone else’s program by highlighting my admiration for what I saw in Bradenton, Florida last weekend. When you watch a stock bodied car leave the starting line on a tire that would fit your street car, go about a 1.15 sixty foot, and then pour on the coals to make it to the eighth mile in 4.10 seconds at more than 190mph it is nearly a religious experience. I know guys are going 4.00s and that what I saw was not world record fast but it was the fastest I have ever seen these guys go in person and with the ability to really watch for myself what it is all about. Studying the way the suspension works on Keith Berry’s Corvette is mind boggling in all the right ways.
In order for something to advance and this includes steam engines and drag racing cars, there needs to be an enthusiasm around the activity or the machine. There is so much buzz and hype around these cars in the current climate of the sport one has to both revel in it and then wonder what’s next. Drag racing is always a sport of “what’s next” and sometimes those calls are easier to make than others. When Mercury came out with a flip top funny car in the 1960s it was the next linear step in the evolution of what would become today’s amorphous 300mph funny cars. When Don Garlits finally got the steering speed right with the engine mounted in the back of his car, it was the next step in top fuel. The “small tire” world whether we are talking 10.5 slicks or 275/315 radials has so many off-shoots, differences, and subcultures it is really tough to see what the next big thing will be. So many of the classes are all running so close together now that there does seem to be redundancy on some level but throwing too many different setups into the same pot doesn’t make that much sense either.
As always happens in drag racing and history, the best designs and technology will ultimately rise to the top. The more I read about guys like James Watt, Robert Stevenson, and others who changed the history of the world with their inventions the more I kept relating the whole scene back to drag racing which is as much an arms race of knowledge and the application of technology as the steam engine was. The human mind is an amazing tool when it is applied in the work of solving a problem, whether the problem is pulling water from a mine, hauling cotton to a mill, or hustling a 3,000hp drag car down a straight course.
I cannot pinpoint why I really love drag racing. I do know that seeing people triumph and make discoveries in doing so is a big draw. I know that seeing those incremental performance increases is a big draw, and I do know that seeing people putting their hearts, souls, and minds into their work is exciting and thrilling when they succeed.
The bottom line is whether the performance advances are coming from inside the well lit, well funded walls of a professional race team or the darkened garages of a homespun effort, the sport continues to advance and reinvent itself because of the environment it exists in. There are times when I think it would have been incredible to live in different historical eras to see things that changed the world in their earliest forms, then I look at the things happening today and I wouldn’t give this stuff up for the world.
Now…will we see the first 3.60s top fuel time slip this weekend?
