By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

Lebanon Valley Dragway is a great dragstrip in eastern New York State. It’s got a great history as a track that all the great touring professional racers hit during their barnstorming trips across the country in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s one of the tracks where Shirley Muldowney cut her teeth as well.

Dragstrips are not like road courses that are known for their layout. Nope, dragstrips are normally known for their oddball features or kitschy facets that just stick out in your memory.

I worked at Lebanon Valley Dragway when I was in college as an announcer and on one of my last days before graduation I brought my camera to take some photos to remember the place by. One thing I couldn’t forget to shoot was the track’s infamous Funny Car on a Pole. Read about it at BangShift.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

The crew at BANGshift.com have been all over the NHRA March Meet in Bakersfield CA this weekend, and they’ve got a huge gallery of all the droolworthy drag-racing action they ogled there. Check it out!

Last weekend Brent Leivestad pulled his CRX out of its seven year hibernation and brought it out to the drags at the Bandimere Street Tuner Mayhem. With a few tweaks the car managed to run the quarter in 9.9 seconds, even with a broken traction bar. After that the tech guys decided the cage certification was out of date and stopped the CRX from making any more runs. But Brent plans to get the car legal and back on the track to shoot for 8s. See page 3 of his ride page for more on this wild CRX. Pages 1 and 2 document his one-of-a-kind Pro FWD Civic, which is nearing completion. We’ll keep you posted on Brent’s progress with both of these cars.

Since the cars were rolling at the start of the race, you can’t really call this a straight up drag race, but it’s still interesting to see how Godzilla and the Italian Stallion match up. Enjoy. 

via CarScoop

This summer during the finals at a local drag racing event, our R32 Skyline burst into flames. The technical staff later commented that the N2O system failed and caused a fuel explosion. Fortunately the driver (Mikhail Maksimetc) managed to escape without serious injury. This GTR was a good drag car, with a turbocharged RB26-DET with Greddy T8838GK and Jerico 5MT transmission. It made 850hp + 100hp on N2O, with a best time of 9.7 sec. This clip was taped by one of the spectators on his mobile phone.

We’ve all heard of driving it until the wheels fall off, but this takes it a little far. Watch!

Back on Valentine’s Day of this year I blogged about the owner of a 2.5 L Garret-turbocharged Caravan and his gentlemanly wager against a friend and his GTA Trans Am. Well, that race is near—it’s set to take place tomorrow, Tuesday the 1st. Here are their rules:

• Best 2 out of 3 runs
• No nitrous
• No limit on work done before July 1st
• Breakdown or sale of vehicle voids bet
• Losing team pays winner’s track fee + $200 cash prize.

I think it’s going to be a hell of a race—stay tuned!

While we were shooting the video with the Drift Office guys there was some great action behind us on the drag strip. I kept running over there check out the cars (gravitating to the Mopars of course). I really dug this Dart with slots. There was a pretty sweet ’63 Plymouth, too, and I knew Sean and Kathy would be pissed if I didn’t snap a pic of the Corrado. A ton more photos after the jump.

Continue reading "Friday Night Drags at Pacific Raceways" »

You all probably remember last summer’s awful story of Troy Critchley, the pro mod Corvette driver who lost control of his car during a burnout and plowed into a crowd of bystanders at a kids’ charity event in Selmer, Tennessee. Now, the Aussie racer is up on charges of vehicular homicide (times six, the number of people killed), and 22 counts of "reckless aggravated assault," one for each of the spectators injured during the incident. He’s also getting sued by the families of the injured and deceased to the tune of over $100 million dollars. Sounds like it’s time to set out for Mexico.

Vehicular homicide seems a little harsh for anything short of deliberately running someone down in your car, and here’s why the charges are unlikely to stick: the road on which the drags were taking place was legally closed, and the event was fully sanctioned by the municipality, which also failed to provide any barriers to protect the assembled crowd. The local fire department even hosed down the road, reportedly, to make the surface more slippery for burnouts. While Critchley definitely exercised some poor judgment, it seems a bit unfair that he should take the entire fall (and how) for an event that was inherently unsafe and mismanaged from the outset. What do you think—where should responsibility lie?

Actually, this is the truck formerly known as Midnight Pumpkin. Wayne bought a mildly-modded ’79 Chevy pickup back in 2001, and over the years has transformed it into a wrathful thing more akin to the the Chevy Tantrum than a friendly old farm truck. He swapped out its 305 for a 454 and started racing it at the dragstrip a week later. After eventually blowing up the rear end, the trans, and the 454, Pumpkin was in rough shape, and got torn down for a total overhaul and a new 468 big block, returning from the dead for the 2007 season in a ghastly new paint scheme as "The Undertaker." After being stripped and swapped once again, this time trading up to a 496 (!!), there’s no telling what this insane rig will do. At last count, it looked like it was running low 9′s. Keep us updated, Wayne!