After a weekend off for the teams to rest and reload after the western swing, the NHRA will roll into the great state of Minnesota for the 2018 Lucas Oil Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway. The track is awesome, the race is awesome, the famous Zoo is awesome, and the total package of all those things makes it one of our favorite events on the NHRA tour. Brainerd is a race you really need to “want” to go to. The track is hours away from the Twin Cities and is in this great area full of camps, hunting and fishing derbies, etc.
As you will see in this video, things were roast toasty in Minnesota on the weekend that they raced in 1988. Lots of sweat rollin off the brows of various racers. The guys who won the professional categories are another cool story. From the awesome Tony Christian who had the season of his life in 1988 grabbing multiple wins to a young John Force snagging the third win of his burgeoning career, to the always awesome Joe Amato winning during the salad days of his career in top fuel, it touches all the bases.
The race track in Brainerd is part of the road course which is long, so long that we have read it has the most significant straightaway in the United States at over one mile. All we know is that the place is long and when anyone has trouble, safety is just a sweeping right hander away. We’ll get to the zoo not this coming weekend but the one after. Be There!
