By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

It seems to have been a rough year for drag-race attendees, and this horrific incident in Brazil is the latest assault on race-fan safety. Be warned: there’s kids screaming and brief views of grisly injuries.

Stands Collapse at Drag Race! Over 100 Hurt!

By Michael Berenis

Tampa Sports Car Examiner

Somebody better call Subway’s Jared, because if this guy intends on driving a drag car he needs to eat fresh. Stuck like Chuck, this man of larger proportions has no business sitting in a drag car but yet he ventured into uncharted waters only to become a prisoner of his own passion.  Race more, eat less! Read more at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

The last time I witnessed Reece McGregor’s NZ based R32 GTR was back in 2006 when I first started taking photos. It hasn’t changed very much on the exterior, but has come back to Australia with a load more power. Let’s see if a new record is on the books.

This past Tuesday was quite a day of testing for this weekend’s Jamboree drag event, the most important Australian drag meeting of the year. McGregor ran an 8.3 @ 184mph pass on his second run, but the team wasn’t too impressed with this time. The clutch was pulling the car down and wasn’t set up correctly for the sticky track. After adjusting the clutch, the next pass was an 8.22 @ 183mph. With testing ending at 4PM the end of the day was already upon us, they put in one more pass: a 7.73 @ 187 mph. That’s a huge improvement over a short period of a few hours, it will be exciting to see what times it can pull this weekend’s Jamboree, Australia’s biggest sport compact and custom event of the year. Be sure to tune in, it’ll be streamed live all over the globe. See more at Speedhunters.

-by Casey Dhnaram

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here’s a new video of the famous White Zombie (an electric-powered 72 Datsun 1200) running the quarter in 10.4 (and leaving a GTR behind in the process). Via Jalopnik

By Michael Berenis

Tampa Sports Car Examiner

This guy is hungry for more than just alcohol, it wants meat! A stud broke loose in the supercharger which ended up cracking the case, lifting the injector, and causing the throttle body to open. Lucky enough for the entree, the driver had a quick reaction time and cut the motor before launching down the strip. No one was killed, but this could have easily turned sour. Read more about the hungry funny car at Tampa Sports Car Examiner.

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

We’re going to get your morning started off with a Texas sized bang today. We were tipped off to this video which shows a pass down the strip that goes very badly for both racers. When the slower car in a bracket-style race gets into trouble, it never ends well.

This wreck is really a mini version of the infamous 2005 smash-up between Pro Stock racers Bruce Allen and Kenny Koretsky at the Texas Motorplex. The massive impact you’ll see is scary enough, but the fire? Yeah, the fire is bad.

Thanks to Robert Martin for the tip on this scary video!

By Mark Gearhart

powerTV Media

When the Ford Mustang first hit the streets in 1964, few people realized what a performance icon it would soon become. But the idea of putting a V8 engine in a small coupe did much to revolutionize the racing world as it did change the consumer market for muscle cars.

Continue reading "Saving Drag Racing History: The Super Mustang" »

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

During the NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways in Kent, WA this weekend, lifelong drag racer Mark Niver was killed after a wreck caused by a parachute malfunction. The chutes tore away before they had a chance to slow Mark’s Top Alcohol dragster, which then barreled through the sand trap and slammed the catch netting, causing the car’s frame to buckle over onto the driver’s cockpit. It seems a little senseless for a “safety net” to be responsible for someone’s death–shouldn’t it have a break-away design so it could still slow the vehicle significantly but then let go before causing catastrophic damage? I guess you can’t prepare for every possible eventuality when you’re dealing with basically flimsy vehicles hurtling through space at 300 mph–but NHRA has been a little deadly lately, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a safety crack-down before too long. Rest in peace, Mark Niver.

By Dan Strohl

Hemmings

The origins of many automotive terms often seem lost in the shrouds of history. For example, nobody yet knows for sure when and where the term “hot rod” came about, and there has always been speculation about the phrase “drag race.” After all, racers are not literally dragging anything when they line up side-by-side on the quarter-mile. Sure, you’re bound to get plenty of apocryphal explanations and suppositions, but it’s rare that these automotive terms get treated to serious linguistic study.

Gary Martin’s The Phrase Finder recently did just that, however, with an examination of the term “drag race.” Their findings note that “drag,” meaning a highway or other thoroughfare, date back to the 1570s, when roads were created by horse-drawn sledges known as drags. Elizabeth I herself didn’t refer to roads as drags, but referred to road-building equipment as drags. That use of the term then kicked around for the next 300-some years, hopping the Atlantic and becoming essentially a synonym of “street” or “road,” which gave rise to the related term “main drag,” familiar to any small-town resident across America. Thus, when hot rodders lined up for a street race, the term “drag race” was born, with “drag” referring not to what was raced (as with “monster truck racing” or “swamp buggy racing”), rather to where the race was conducted (as with “dry lakes racing” or “circle track racing”).

Or, at least, so says The Phrase Finder. What other explanations have you heard for the origins of “drag race” and of other automotive terms? Read more at Hemmings.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Here’s part two of TechWeasel‘s series on basic drag racing. Cool stuff!

Dragracing 101 – The Tree and Staging