JANUARY, 2005

DRAG RACE
Kentucky, New Jersey, Ford Mustangs, Burning rubber, Coor's Light, Testosterone, etc.

By Will von Ratblood

 

[FOOTNOTES are on a separate page; you may want to leave that open, or ignore it altogether]

 

MUSCLE CAR: a factory-built, high-performance automobile made primarily in Detroit from 1964 to 1974, typically consisting of a mid-sized car containing a large V8 engine.

 

DRAG RACE

All religions should be abolished; we should worship only the internal combustion engine. And anyone not willing to participate in this new form of worship should be barred from having his person propelled in a vehicle containing such a power plant. At least, this is the feeling I had after attending my first drag race in Atco, New Jersey in August of 2003. Of course the event was about cars, real muscle cars; there was a lot of watching cars compete and gazing at them parked in the pits, of staring at parts and body panels and accessories and anything car-related - and simply enjoying the atmosphere of a gathering filled with like-minded enthusiasts - but more than anything there was watching, staring at, nearly drooling over, engines. Engines running and engines at rest, stock engines and their highly modified cousins that look like they might be of another species, engines with all parts polished to perfection, engines half apart, their pieces set on tables and tarps on the ground. And since this was an event of the National Mustang Racing Association (NMRA), all these parts, engines and the cars to which they were attached were of one make, that being Ford.

The NMRA is a racing sanctioning body, similar to the larger NHRA (National Hot Rod Association), conducting an all-Ford race season consisting of eight events beginning each March and ending in September. Locations are drag strips along the East coast from New Jersey to Florida with races in Illinois, Ohio and Texas. A couple participants in this weekend's race had come, towing their cars in white enclosed trailers, from as far as Texas and New Mexico. These weekends are gearhead central, an intense display of machinery both at rest and in action for attendees and participants passionate about, crazy about, cars and Fords and drag racing. For the uninitiated it is to enter a world mechanically technical, where no specifics are left unmeasured and where a car is dismantled not because it is failing to run but because a gizmo is not gizmoing quite as perfectly as it should be. It is to enter a world that is very loud. It is to see something painstakingly fine-tuned with precision and then released in the open, in a convulsion of smoke and noise and speed to deliver all the power of which it is capable in a performance lasting typically less than ten seconds.

And it’s a thrill. There’s the thrill of competition, with a daredevil element added -- men and women operating machines at dangerously high speeds. Throw in the all-ages atmosphere of a fair, and teams and families participating who will spend many weekends together throughout the year becoming friends, working with and competing against each other, even communicating between races, and you have a community. A community with a near religious devotion to Fords.

I was present as a guest of the PBM Racing team, a collection of friends and mechanics led by Chris Beningo and Billy Laskowski from southeastern Pennsylvania. The team includes about four to seven others, but Chris and Billy are in charge of things as they own the car and Billy is the driver. Their car, a bright yellow, highly modified 2003 Ford Cobra, is raced in the Super Street Outlaw class, the second highest of eleven. Despite having grown up in a rural area of Pennsylvania where, throughout the summer, the sounds of cars at Maple Grove Raceway could be heard faintly in the distance, I had never witnessed a drag race. Now, attending two full weekends of them in one season would be a learning experience and initiation, baptizing me by gas fumes and engine roar into a congregation of the motor-minded.

 

SATURDAY, AUGUST 7th: ATCO, NEW JERSEY

The first day at Atco begins miserably and fails to go up from there, with intermittent rain that never stops for long and interferes with the qualifying rounds. With fans and drivers seeking cover more than anything, the rain has made day one of the event rather uneventful so far. Still, plenty of fans have turned out. Tucked into woods in southern New Jersey, about forty five minutes from Philadelphia, “the track” is a sprawling complex that includes a dirt track for motocross racing, an area where participants have parked RVs to camp for the weekend, a bar, and the three main areas related to the drag racing: the pit where crews keep and work on their cars, a midway with food vendors and others selling and promoting an array of high performance car parts, and the race track itself, a more than quarter mile straight line of asphalt partly lined on either side with grandstands. Loudspeakers in every area project the announcer's voice from a two-story tower near the starting line.

Wandering around the midway you pass stand after stand of car accessories and parts, many of which most of us probably could not identify as something even belonging in a car. At the stand for the Edelbrock company, I’m eyeing up the LT1 Power Package. It would be great to have that aluminum head with its “specially designed 170cc intake and 60cc exhaust ports” and combustion chamber volume of 54cc. It will, after all, “work with stock or aftermarket self-guiding roller rocker arms.” And to match this baby to the Performer LT1 camshaft, something “designed for optimum power from the low-end to the mid-range” - I mean, c’mon. You’re looking at billet steel cams with an iron gear compatible with stock oil pump drive gears (to eliminate those wear problems), and on top of that it has “a duration of 218 at .050 inches, with a lift of .535 inches at the valve”! And I don’t need to tell you how I felt on learning “the lobe separation and intake centerline are both 112.” But since none of this means anything to me and I don’t know what I’d do with any of this stuff, I move on.

A van from a Philadelphia rock radio station plays cheesy pop-metal through speakers set up aside a table where it looks like they're giving things away or perhaps raffling something. A few young women in tight-fitting clothing bearing the station's call letters bounce around the table and mingle on the midway, their presence more likely a better promotional tool than the crappy product blaring from the speakers.

There exists a cartoon of two men standing in front of a car with its hood open, each holding a beer, leaning in to look at the engine, ones loose jeans sliding down to create a plumber’s crack. The caption is “Idle worship,” and there’s certainly an abundance of such worship going on at the track. Everywhere men stand around gazing at cars, engines running or not, videotaping them, taking pictures. Few cars standing still have their hoods closed for long. The individual pieces hold as much fascination for the men in attendance as do the assembled, complete engines, though the ultimate is always witnessing the engine perform, pushed to its operating limits on the track together with the person controlling it, and all the variables that human element implies. Men will stand around for fifteen minutes staring at a piece of something held in their hands. I begin to doubt that a stand here offering cheap Cuban cigars and pornography would draw a fraction of such meditation. At one point, a man and woman enter the pit area occupied by the people with whom I’m staying. She removes her sweatshirt, poses in her t-shirt by the racecar while the man snaps a picture, and then the two leave.

Over at the dynomometer people have gathered to watch cars do little more than rev their engines. Anyone with a car and a driver’s license can take part. You drive up a ramp on to a platform about five feet off the ground and the car strapped down tight. The rear wheels sit on rollers so a load can be applied when the engine is turned on and the transmission engaged. The engine is started, there is a brief run through the gears, and things are shut off. But this is only part of the excitement; a computer provides a graph for the car’s owner of the horsepower, torque and rpms measured during this time.

All day, from anywhere within the compound, you can hear the sound of cars periodically going down the track with a whine that goes up and up and just stops as if the cars are disappearing. In the afternoon, during a break in the racing, two steel ramps are brought out in front of the bleachers. Two guys on motocross bikes run at the ramps and are launched high into the air performing acrobatics -- those tricks where the entire body is not connected to the motorcycle while both are suspended midair for a second. It's thrilling and a little frightening to watch at first, but then you get used to it after a few minutes; you get used to seeing guys fly up into the air on their motorcycles, and let go of the things completely while high above the asphalt and steel. It does not seem the least bit unusual, and your hand full of French fries no longer pauses on its way to your mouth when cycle and rider twist in the air.

Qualifying runs go on sporadically during breaks between periods of rain. Each time the rain stops, heaters are pushed along the track to dry it while drivers and cars sit parked in two lines, waiting. Ordered only loosely by class at this point, cars line up in the staging area and, two at a time, race in an attempt to get the best personal time possible. The results of qualifying rounds determine whom each driver will be paired up against to begin with in the following day's race -- the eliminations. Those with the fastest times today will get to begin the next day's races alongside those with the slowest times in the same class. Then, win each race you’re in - about four at most - and you’ve won the event in your class; lose one race and you’re done. As day becomes evening, however, it becomes obvious the rain has caused too many delays; an announcement is made that racing is done for the day and some qualifying runs will have to wait for the next morning.

When the crowd is gone, the track closed, and the gate locked at ten o’clock that night, some drivers and their crews will have left to stay in nearby motels. But many will stay, camping in tents and RVs on a grassy area on the far side of the track away from the pits. Some stay right in the pit area, and work goes on into the night by many who need to fix or otherwise make adjustments to their cars, preparing them for the next day of racing. People wander around the pits, walking or riding golf carts or four-wheeled ATVs -- vehicles used to move quickly between track areas, to tow racecars here and there, or just to joyride on. Occasional lightning-like flashes emit from between trailers where mechanics are welding. The crackling rumble of an engine started somewhere in the darkness lasts a minute, pulses louder three times, then dies out.

I am staying on a bunk in the fore of a car trailer belonging to the PBM guys. Their car, along with tools, car parts, folding chairs and tables, a huge canopy, a gas grille, and a golf cart, has been towed here in the trailer behind a truck looking like the cab of a typical tractor-trailer rig with a small RV body attached to it.

At night there is a lot of eating, and passersby are invited to help finish the mountain of barbecued food that Chris' girlfriend, Mary, cooked. And beer flows too -- Coor's Light ("It's cheap," I'm told after complaining about it.) The, mostly rented, golf carts are abused; two people stand on the back bumper of one, tipping it back, and it scrapes the ground as another person drives the thing in a wheelie. Riders do tricks on ATVs, get up on two wheels while riding through the pits. At one point I am enlisted to drive the golf cart for two others during an appropriation of racing banners hung on fences around the track, but express being uncomfortable with my role as an accomplice in this activity; "Just drive the thing," I'm told.

Later that night we go to the bar at the track. Sitting just behind the stands, the bar has a wooden deck outside, and the bland, chilly ambiance of your typical “sports” bar within. A cheesy band plays top 40 cover songs. You would think maybe speed-metal might be more appropriate, or perhaps Tibetan chants to bring calm in the downtime after a day immersed in the noise and violence and speed of roaring cars. But the extremeness witnessed on the track just a few feet away remains there and does not seep into the bar, although one man is very drunk and getting progressively out of control. He takes off his shirt, dances and jumps around all by himself, bumps into people, and is warned to calm down by the bouncer after repeatedly approaching the stage and getting too close to the band's female singer. That night when I crawl into the bunk, others are still up drinking. A giant fan is set up to move air through the hot, dank trailer, doing what it can to relieve the muggy atmosphere. We are, after all, parked in the middle of an asphalt parking lot baked with the day’s swampy New Jersey heat.

 

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