(Photos by John Gatliff) – While Tom Bailey’s mind-blowing 6.83 average upon completion of Hot Rod Magazine Drag Week 2013 is most certainly the single greatest accomplishment for a street legal drag race car in history, I actually think that it is even more significant than all of that to drag racing as a whole. How could I make so bold a statement? Think about it. The last time a drag racing car of any stripe, road legal or not, made six second laps for five consecutive days on four different drag strips was likely during the match racing funny car and barnstorming top fuel days….if it even happened then.
Because I don’t have access to enough records material to 100% legitimize this data, I picked up the phone and called every brainiac, drag stat freak of note in my phone book. Through those phone calls, we were able to piece together with some certainty that no one has done what Tom Bailey did later than 1975 but most likely it happened last between 1970-1973 time frame before the big oil embargo squashed several tracks and knee-capped many traveling racers with high fuel prices. Applying some logic and historical knowledge, the last type of car that made six second runs for five days straight at different tracks was probably a funny car. Top fuelers were dipping into the 5’s by 1973 and in reality, the funny car match race scene was more robust than that for top fuel dragsters by then. Additionally, there were only a handful of teams across the country that even had the wherewithal to complete that task and maintain that type of schedule.
Knowing that, Tom and Steve Morris accomplished something truly significant in modern drag racing, not just in street legal car drag racing…in modern drag racing period.
Hot Rod Drag Week has always represented the (and I say this with love and respect) lunatic fringe of hot rodding. There are few people with the gumption to think about tackling the week and fewer still with the balls to show up and do it, no matter the class. To have a car drive more than 1,000 miles, complete six second laps at every track under different atmospheric and surface conditions, and return home (mostly) intact is a feat of herculean scope. The fact that the car runs on gasoline and not nitromethane again places it in its own category. The funny cars of the early 1970s were dumping a near 100% load of nitro into their engines. Tom Bailey’s Camaro burned no such thing.
Stripping everything away, the Hot Rod name on the event, the media coverage of the event, the hype around it, and the expectations on Tom Bailey, if he and Steve Morris just hopped in the car and did this themselves for kicks, it would still be as legit as it was on Drag Week. Luckily for us, the event provides a great platform to highlight accomplishments such as this one. History has photos and video of the runs. We’ll know 100 years from now that it happened and I am kind of obsessed that it gets put into the right context.
This isn’t just a cool thing that happened on Drag Week. This is a performance streak that has not been replicated since Richard Nixon was in office some 40 years ago. Not to be woefully redundant, but here’s to hoping that the accomplishments of Bailey and Morris don’t get lost to history. Someone may come around and shatter their current marks, but they did it first, just as Larry Larson cemented his name into the books as being the first to go 200-mph and six seconds at the event a couple of years ago. Larson’s accomplishments were (and still are) mind blowing. I see Larry’s accomplishments tied intrinsically with Hot Rod Drag Week whereas the Bailey/Morris 6.83 average is something that stands on its own two legs as part of drag racing as a whole.
I sure am glad that I got to see a couple days of the madness happen. There was complete shock and awe at the beginning of the week, squeaky 6.90 runs in the middle, and an epic finish the likes of which were seen in the baseball movie The Natural. In that film character Roy Hobbs, knocked a home run into the light towers during a pivotal game, causing sparks and glass to shower down as he rounded the bases. Tom Bailey’s version was to make a final 217-mph lap that was so fast it sucked the windows out and shattered the car’s lightweight doors as it went through the lights. The dramatic effect was largely the same.
While some will argue that Hot Rod Drag Week’s last true barrier has been broken, it seems to me that the fight is just getting interesting. The gap between American competitors at Drag Week and England’s Andy Frost has narrowed to the point that it isn’t out of the realm to consider that someone may actually be able to run a 6.40 or thereabouts at the event some time in the next couple of years. Bailey nearly punched a 6.60 out of his car this year, after all.
I send a hearty congrats to Tom Bailey and Steve Morris. They worked as a great team during the event and they bashed that Camaro deep into places where none of us ever thought possible even 2-3 years ago. Well done, men. Now get those doors fixed and start prepping for next year.
Here’s how Bailey Averaged 6.83 – (Information from HotRod.com)
Monday: 6.72
Tuesday:6.70
Wednesday: 6.99
Thursday: 6.96
Friday: 6.78
2013 HOT ROD Drag Week average: 6.83 seconds
Let me start by saying that I think Drag Week is the best thing going, it is the
one racing event that truly gets me exited, or should I say got me exited. I agree
that Tom’s accomplishment is truly amazing, I also have to say that the
farther removed from an “original” car a race car becomes the less
interested in it I become. Larson’s car was right on the edge for me but these
Camaro’s are just too much. I’m afraid that Drag Week may have “jumped the
shark” IMO.
I entirely agree, Larson even mentions the issue in that video about his car and Drag Week.
Don’t give up on DW yet. Tom Bailey and Ahokas were the only two there in pro mod style cars. There were still 228 others that were not.
Unless all you care about is who got the title “Worlds Fastest”….
I did DW this year and did not actually see a single run either made. I still had a blast!
Sorry but I have to disagree with that statement. Tom Bailey’s looks more of a stock bodied car compared to Ahokas Camaro which is definitely a Pro Mod. Finally Sick Second have lived up to its name!
Agreed – it looks like a production car on the outside; they’ve kept the bodywork design pretty close to the original design, even if it’s a fiberglass bodied tube frame car. Quite an accomplishment; as Brian noted, it’s something that hasn’t even been done on the funny car circuit in decades.
too bad the door fell off of it. wouldn’t have happened it was a steel door.
I disagree. I am quite familiar with tire shake. THey were in a position to “swing for the fence”. We were sitting about the 60′ clocks on the spectator/passenger side. they had a whole lot of wheel speed and were lucky they didn’t turn the tires square as there was considerable tire distortion and they had it on ‘kill’. Not to mention hot conditions all week, and that day 5 track was no where good as day 1 at Beech Bend. I bet a dollar to a donut when they got the Camaro back and pull off all the panels & inspect it there will be more things to weld/ re-glue.
Until Frost comes across the pond like the lads from Aussie, he’s no different than any NMCA-type ProMod trailer queen with a plate on it.
Let Frost run Drag Week. If it makes it all 5 days, then he can hold the title “World’s Fastest STREET Car”, until then, he’s a slow dog in the wild pack of trailered street machines.
Tom Bailey rightfully earned the title: World’s Fastest STREET Car.
He drove 1,000+ miles in 4 days on DOT tires and pump gas.
That, folks, is a STREET car, no matter what the kids in England claim.
Congrats to these guys. This is one of if not THE most significant accomplishment in modern or all of drag racing history in my opinion. Yeah it’s a fiberglass bodied tube chassis car, but it survived 1000+ miles of street driving on pump gas, through rain, traffic jams, multiple impound inspections, etc. It’s legit. You have to remember the 6 second or 200 MPH pro modified and pro stock barriers did not fall that long ago. We have come a long way in the last 10-20 years. And this car and this barrier is the culmination of all of it.
Big picture: The technology/parts industry spawned by Pro Modified and Fastest Street Car racing has benefitted all of us drag racers and hot rodders in some way. EFI/Nitrous/Turbos/Blowers were too wild for the street, too expensive, too hard to figure out, or violently destroyed engines not too long ago. Now 1000+ reliable horsepower on the street is no big deal. Also suspension, drivetrain and tire technology has advanced tons as well. So thank the founding fathers who exploded motors and/or crashed their cars for all of the stuff we can now easily buy from a catalog or on the Internet. In the 80’s we thought hot rodding was dead. Now you can buy an 8 second blown (or turbo coming soon) Cobra Jet Mustang or COPO Camaro delivered to your dealer. These things are all related.
I’m sure part of the debate over pro mods vs. factory produced cars will rage on. However, I’m pretty sure DW requires all entries to be licensed, registered, and inspected in their respective home states. Didn’t look like Ahokas’ camaro had windshield wipers. He stopped and covered the car when it rained. Kinda nit picking, I know, but he’s from Texas and had a Texas inspection sticker. Hopefully the sticker was not obtained outside the normal inspection station process. Just sayin.
We are required to have wipers here in Texas so hard telling how he got through inspection.
I think DragWeek is the greatest! Thanks to Freiburger and the “Hot Rod” gang for doing it. Saying that the tube frame cars are not street cars, is like saying a kit Cobra is not a street car because it didn’t come from a factory and would be uncomfortable to drive across country (but my friend and neighbor just did it!) Come on! Let’s celebrate the accomplishments of these hard core Hot Rodders, or go back and take a nap on your couch!
Great blog and excellent points. It certainly was an awesome feet. Further to Andy, I don’t think he ever runs in the air DA and heat the Drag Week typically does. The atmospheric conditions if nothing else I want to see how his car performs.
feet? feat, do you mean?
Drag Week is a great platform for the”fringe” cars and many others. Congrats to Hot Rod for a great event and to Tom Bailey for an amazing week.
Nothing matters tube frame vin or not , the car drove the specified route as required and passed drag weeks tech . Way to go guys you have made history .
its not a production vehicle like Larry Larsons nova.
Sure, its an awesome car, but its not a car manufactured by the dealership and sold on the floor, simple, its just not the same.
If you pull the bodies off of Jeff’s 57, Joe’s 56, and Larry’s Nova your not going to find much that is different between them and the “Pro-Mod” cars. My dad took pictures in Tulsa last year of Larry and Jeff’s cars with the front wheels off the ground in the traps. There is a dangerous line there and it takes altering the lines of the cars to cross it IMO. Bailey’s car did with the least departure from the stock look. I’m no chevy guy but I didn’t know Bailey’s car was not steel and not %100 Camaro shaped until sometime after DW12.
that car is just BADASS !
I got pulled over today in my street car, because the drag chute was covering up my license plate.
I was at St Louis and saw all of the cars run and must say that both camaros were impressive. The craziest thing was seeing daves car pulling a trailer. Very strange to see a pro mod on the highway. Really seemed out of place on the road. But I think at this level steel or no steel they fight horsepower and track conditions more that anyone. Especially to see Bailey tire shake 3 passes and then come out and turn a quick time with a smooth pass. And it was also crazy to see everyone hot lap their cars.
andy frost ran 6.403 @ 229.3mph, its as much a street car as tom baileys and the Ahokas camaro, im sure it would complete drag week because its basicaly the same as the other pro mod cars that took part in drag week. i can’t understand why people bitch about him and his car when its just the same as the stuff you run over there in america,its just a little bit faster,when larry larson decides to shed a few kilos from his car by fitting a few carbon panels im sure it will be faster than frosty’s but for now its the “fastest streetcar in the world”
hmm..Larsons Deuce is the borderline as far as DW goes ..but the goal was to build a streetable car into a drag car …NOT take a drag($) car and de tune it to a street car ..wonder what the price tag was on the Camaro ..really …NO wipers ….not a street car …as for the rest of the classes ..kudos ..really had to tune and fix problems that happened along the way..let me take a tube frame and slap a lift up F/C body on it …is this what were really after …I think not .. …
Quite a bit i criticism of Andy the Brit but also loads of flak aimed at the US guy?.
theres a lot of water and a lot of dollars/pounds between us finding out if the brit would be as fast stateside as the yank would be in blighty.
biggest respect to Andy and Tom for achieving greatness under their respective rules.
Paul
PS i could thrash both of them easily if i didn,t spend so much time on the internet and i knew what the difference was between the open end and ring end of me spanner? LOL