The most basic concept of a race is that someone wins the race and someone loses the race, right? That’s the whole freaking reason that any sort of event like racing, sports of all types, etc came to be invented. There seems to be a faction of people in the world today who fail to realize that it is integral to the whole exercise that there be a winner and a loser and beyond that, integral to the whole thing that someone points out that fact and spreads the word about how well the winners did and how close the losers came. These are the basic tenets of competition from cars to competitive hot dog eating so why is becoming so important to gloss off the fact that someone kicked ass and someone else got their ass kicked? It boggles my mind in every possible way.

This whole train of thought began a week or so ago after we published the results of an event at Lancaster Dragway in New York. Mike Brooks and Jose Ferrer were on site to cover a deal where a couple of the Street Outlaws guys (Boosted GT and Kamikaze Chris) showed up and took on local hitters Doug Vanstrom and Moe Alfaqih. Doug and Moe took care of business, defended their home territory and to the apparent delight of the fans, beat up on the out of town invaders. I pointed this fact out in the story, mentioning that Doug and Moe “showed the guys the way home” and did so in fine fashion. I really didn’t think anything of it.

Later through social media I saw some people commenting on the story and they were taking particular exception with that line. It was mentioned that the guys were super cool, everyone had made fast friends, and that they didn’t think it was cool to apparently point out that they had gotten their asses kicked. Here’s where I start getting confused because again, it gets back to winners and loses. Without them we’ve got a whole bunch  of nothing going on.

Lancaster Dragway was packed as well as every other drag strip that books these guys in because people want to see one of two things. They want to see their local gun beat up on the guys from TV or they want to see the guy’s TV hero status validated right in front of their very eyes. It is competition. It is winning and losing. It is manning up (womaning up, too), taking a swing and seeing if you can put one over the fence. If the flyer was “The Street Outlaws guys are coming to make best friends, pet your cat, and maybe make some time trials down the track…” no one would show up. I think it is spectacular that these guys all made pals and that everyone was cool, respectful, and raced hard. All that being said, it still does not change the fact that somebody won and somebody lost.

I don’t see this as much a “participation medal” problem as much as I see it as a skin thickness, or situational awareness problem. I’m guessing that neither Boosted or Chris read the story and if they did I am guessing that they didn’t spend three seconds thinking about any of the words in it. Why? Because they came to do a job and they did it. No, they did not make the finish line first but they put on an awesome show, got paid, and made their fans happy. They raced hard and ran into a pair of faster guys. They were friendly, received like heroes, and will be received like heroes when they come back. They get it. They understand how the program operates.

Smack talk, ball busting, chop breaking, fun taunting, and aggressive language have been a part of drag racing since the sport began. Elevated to an art form during the gasser wars and perpetrated by the camshaft companies, it got the fans whipped up, the racers whipped up, and the gate money whipped up at tracks across the country. The REASON the Street Outlaws guys are in such high demand is the same. They talk smack on TV, they face each other down, and ultimately they either win or lose when all the marbles are on the line.

Like today, those racers engaging in the gasser wars, these guys engaging millions on Monday nights through the television are largely friends when the cameras are off and the crowds have gone home. The gasser guys used to freaking travel together in a big pack bouncing from place to place where they would entertain crowds before moving down the road. The rivalries lived at the tracks and the laughs lived on the road.

So what’s the bottom line? Drag racing requires winners and it requires losers. It requires guys like me and hundreds/thousands of others to tell you about how each came to be on any given Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. It requires people like you to be interested enough to see who won and for that reason the story needs to be told in an entertaining and fun way.

We’ll keep telling those stories for as long as we can here. We’ll keep telling them in our own style and in our own way. Long story short? We’ll tell you who won and who lost whether you like it or not.