For drag dweebs like us, the clip below is truly awesome. Not so much a video as it is an audio file, hitting play will transport you back to a night in 1973 at Orange County International Raceway with Jon Lundberg on the microphone and Captain Jack McClure velcro’d into his hydrogen peroxide rocket kart. This is not a jet kart, this is a rocket kart and it was as quick and fast, faster actually than virtually everything else at the strip, even the junk that ran on nitro. Englighmen Keith Lee is the guy who had the presence of mind on that night at OCIR in 1973 to pull out his iPhone and… tape record the run, capturing the fantastic excitement that the rocket kart produced.

Pressurized hydrogen peroxide was forced over a silver catalyst screen. That caused the hydrogen peroxide to rapidly expand in the form of steam. Said steam was sent through a nozzle creating thrust and McClure’s ass was launched like a missile down the drag strip. McClure’s final season with the kart was 1973. He sold out and went back to being a boat captain. Jack’s alive, he has the kart back and he’s been making eighth and quarter mile runs with it again. It still defies description and Jack, at nearly 90 years old does too!

One thing we really love about this clip is how Lundberg plays the crowd. The build up to actually giving them the elapsed time and speed is awesomely tense and if you listen to the clip a couple times you will feel it. When he finally reveals the elapsed time the crowd’d reaction is a amazing combo of shock, horror, and screaming admiration towards a guy (in McClure) who had some of the biggest most fearless nards to every rocket down a drag strip.