Ever dream of being a drag racer? Of sitting in the cockpit of a long, sleek rocket on wheels, hands clenched on the wheel, foot hovering above the throttle, engine rumbling beneath you?
I lived that dream – sort of.
The folks at Route 66 Raceway, the new state-of-the-art track in Joliet, recently sponsored a drag race for Chicago-area media. Admittedly, they didn’t trust us with the real dragsters -expensive, high-powered machines. But we did get to drive the almost-as-awesome 1998 Pontiac Firebird.
After brief instructions, I climbed into my assigned car, buckled my seatbelt, secured my helmet, rolled up my windows (to reduce drag) and made sure unneeded electrical systems, like the radio and air conditioner, were turned off (to lessen engine drain).
Instead of sizing up my opponent, as I should have been doing, I was envisioning my car veering off the quarter-mile track and into a wall! (The ambulance sitting at the end of the track didn’t help.) After shaking this image of doom, I inched my car to the starting line. My opponent was already there. We waited for the sequence of lights – three yellow and a green – that start a race. Because only one-tenth of a second separates each light, it’s key to hit the gas on the first yellow.
Though certainly risky in regular cars, drag racing is even more perilous in Top Fuel dragsters. The fastest vehicles on wheels, they go from 0 to 100 m.p.h. in under a second! (That’s faster than a fighter jet or the space shuttle.)
Though our cars reached 100 m.p.h. in just over 14 seconds, dragsters typically hit 300 m.p.h. in just over 4 seconds. And their front wheels ride off the ground for the first 100 feet! Dragsters launch with such force that drivers feel almost five times the force of gravity on them.
Of course, we weren’t plastered to our seats by mega-gravity. Nor did our cars do wheelies. But we did get to peel out.
On the first yellow, I slammed on the gas and didn’t let up until I passed the finish line. Though we don’t recommend you try this at home, putting the pedal to the metal for a quarter mile is a total rush. Especially when there’s nothing – no lights, no traffic, no speed limits – to stop you.
As I blazed across the finish line, I was humming “Born To Be Wild.” In the blink of an eye, I had not only left my rival in my dust, but my fear.
I won my next heat, too, and suddenly found myself among the top finishers. By the end, I had finished third out of about 25 racers.
After the race, I climbed in my own beater car. As I joined the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 80, I thought wistfully of my drag-racing experience. It was one in a million.
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Route 66 Raceway sponsors drag-racing events for the pros, juniors and drag-racing wannabes. For more info, call 815-722-5500.
