Exhilarating. Adrenaline rush. A blast. That’s how drivers in an Adventure Dragster class describe their runs at Frank Hawley’s NHRA Drag Racing School in Pomona, Calif.
The half-day Adventure I class includes classroom instruction and two one-eighth-mile runs. Twenty-two student drivers pile into a compact suite with three large windows overlooking the drag strip. After registering, each participant receives a wristband with a number indicating their driving order and a handout with a cockpit diagram and basic instructions.
A quick glance around the tension-filled room reveals a diverse crowd–20-something to late 50s, tattoo-covered, body-pierced rebels to corporate types. It’s predominantly male–only four women. A show of hands indicates the vast majority received this $139 course as a gift.
Two Frank Hawley program representatives give a spiel about the school and the other classes available, including an Adventure II class that afternoon, which costs an additional $299. It offers one one-eighth-mile run and two quarter-mile runs. They introduce the instructor, Jack Beckman, who has been racing for more than 15 years and was trained by National Hot Rod Association World Champion Frank Hawley.
The school has been in business since 1985.
“Frank Hawley had gone to Jim Russell’s driving school,” said Paul Shields, a program rep for Frank Hawley’s NHRA Drag Racing School in Pomona, Calif. “He had been racing his entire life. He decided he wanted to start a school. He wanted to do it in California, but there weren’t any tracks available. He ended up in Gainesville, Fla. He opened in Pomona in ’96. He closed the Florida location and moved here. The California location was successful, so he last year he reopened the Florida location.”
Hawley lives in Florida now and teaches at that school, which has classes called Race Technician, Alcohol Funny Car/Dragster and Pro Stock Motorcycle. The Dragster Adventure is available in California only, and Super Comp/Super Gas is taught at both.
Beckman teaches the basics of drag racing in about an hour and 45 minutes, emphasizing that students should be nervous. He also said the first run would get the students’ jitters out, and the second run would be more enjoyable. He offered that the kill switch would work when the brakes wouldn’t stop the car and the parachute could be used after that. If all else failed, students would drive into the sand at the end of the track to stop the dragster.
On the track, the sleek Super Comp Dragsters are intimidating at first. A 509-cubic-inch, 700-horsepower, big-block 8-cylinder Chevrolet engine rests a few inches behind the driver’s head, and the bottom of the car is only about four inches off the ground. Students can accelerate from zero to 100 m.p.h. in 7.5 seconds.
“When you first walk out there, you’re kind of nervous, but everyone else is in the same boat,” says Bob Griffith, of La Mirada, Calif.
In driving order, participants line up at a trailer to receive safety gear: a fireproof hood, a helmet, fireproof pants and jacket, a neck collar and racing gloves.
It’s a warm day–in the mid-70s. But the equipment makes it feel much warmer, and it’s constricting.
“The equipment was really hot, but it was really exciting putting it on,” said Megan Strait, a UCLA graduate student. “[Funny car racers] Tony Pedregon, John Force–it was cool to be in their getup. Orange is not really my color, though,” she says, laughing.
“With the safety equipment, you feel a little bit confined,” says Mark Uyekawa, from Yorba Linda, Calif. “No one’s used to wearing that stuff. It’s like playing football.”
As awkward as it is, the equipment serves an important purpose: protection. More than 1,000 students have gone through the Adventure program–about 25 a session, four sessions a month–and none have been hurt. Shields pointed out that the school follows NHRA guidelines. (About 10,000 people have been through the California and Florida programs since the beginning.)
Some students feel confined in the cockpit, which can accommodate students up to 6 feet 8 inches and 320 pounds, but most overcome it.
“When I got in that car, I was feeling really claustrophobic,” said Trilby Smith of Orange, Calif., who received the class as a gift for working on the pit crew for a drag racer at Winternationals and Nationals at Pomona Raceway. “But I get such an adrenaline rush, I pushed myself to get past it.”
Smith does legal-street racing at several Southern California racetracks with her husband, Mike, who takes the dragster class with her. Doubling as her everyday car and racer is a ’98 Ford Mustang GT 4.6 black convertible with a supercharger and a roll cage.
When an instructor straps Smith into the dragster, he asks whether she has any questions. “I said: `How do I get rid of the butterflies?'” Smith recalls. “He told me not to worry–that I’d be fine once I hit the throttle.”
He tells her to hit the start button. This 5-foot 2-inch woman can’t reach it. “He said if you can’t hit start, you can’t drive, so I stretched as far as I could with my middle finger. I barely reached it, but I got it started.”
Smith’s fears are calmed by the sound of the engine. “It’s a kind of soothing feeling along with a powerful feeling. When you hear that much power, it’s incredible.”
In legal-street racing, Smith has done burn-outs, but nothing like this one. (In the burnout, “you get the tires wet and floor the throttle,” Shields said. “The tires spin, and it gets everything [the gravel and sticks the soft rubber tires pick up] off. Also, it heats up the rubber so it’s good and sticky.”)
“The tires are spinning,” she says. “You see the smoke. This car has an aluminum seat on the ground with the engine behind you. I thought, `Oh my God, that’s a lot of power.’ I let off the throttle, and the metal seat dented into my back from the G-force.”
When Smith launches the dragster, she is in “the zone,” she says. “Everything stretches out long–the finish line is way out. Everything gets really quiet. I feel a strong drawing sensation. All I hear is the car, and I can see the end of the track.”
At one-eighth mile, Smith doesn’t want to let off the throttle, but she remembers what Beckman said in class. “The one thing that will make him mad is if you go too far,” she says. “I didn’t want to make him mad.”
The second burnout and run feel better than the first, Smith says. “The only problem is that you have to go back to the pace of everyday life.”
Smith is so addicted she is thinking about taking the two-day, $1,800 class to get her NHRA Competition Driver’s License. “It would be awesome,” she says.
Marc De Frenza, of Newport Beach, Calif., enjoys his dragster experience, too. “I guess I was going more than 90 m.p.h., but it feels much faster than 90 because you’re a lot lower to the ground and accelerate to that speed very fast,” De Frenza says.
To get to that point of acceleration, there are many details to remember: Keep your visor flipped up until Beckman signals you to put it down. Approach the car from behind and the left. Look at Beckman. If he points with his left arm, you turn the steering wheel to the right. If he points with his right arm, you turn the steering wheel to the left. If he puts his arm straight up, keep the wheel straight.
Strait is “really, really nervous” before her first run. “I screamed the whole way down the track,” she says. “I felt like I went far, but I cut off way before the cones.” (Strait reviews her runs on a videotape shot by her father.)
Overall, students are impressed with how well the dragster handles. “The car drives unbelievably straight,” Mark Uyekawa says. “You don’t have to steer it. You just point it in the direction you want to go.”
“I felt like it was glued to straight,” Smith agrees.
Twenty-one drivers take two runs each in two hours. Five drivers are signed up for the Adventure II class in the afternoon. Strait isn’t signed up, but she likes the morning class so much, she decides to take the advanced class.
A short period of classroom instruction focuses on the technical aspects of staging. Then the students head back to the strip for another one-eighth-mile run and two quarter-mile runs at speeds close to 120 m.p.h.
The best driver is Strait, the only female in this class. “My speed was 120, and my lap time was 11.2 seconds,” she says. Printed time sheets prove it, and verify the sentiment on her T-shirt: “I can do anything faster than you can.”
Were her competitors upset? “No,” she says. “They were all really, really nice; they were catering to me. They were all laughing.”
Though Beckman tells students they should go no faster than they feel comfortable doing, you can go from zero to 100 m.p.h, the maximum speed for Adventure I, in about 7 seconds.
A drag strip primer
The lights: Photocells or beams on the starting line are linked to the Christmas tree. When the car breaks the first beam, it lights the pre-stage yellow light. 6 7/8 inches forward is the second beam. When the car breaks that one, it lights the stage yellow light on the tree. Then, three yellow lights flash simultaneously, and 0.4 seconds later the green light flashes. (Thus a perfect reaction time is 0.4 seconds)
Instead of waiting until you see the green light, you’re supposed to go when you see the three yellow lights flash. (It takes about 0.2 seconds for you to see the yellow lights and about 0.4 seconds for your car to react.)
Elapsed Time: Computer-measured time from when your car crosses the starting line to when it crosses the finish line.
Reaction Time: Computer-measured time from when the three yellow lights flash to when your car crosses the starting line.
Shallow Staging: Rolling just far enough forward to light the stage bulb. Will not give you the quickest Reaction Time, but will give you quicker Elapsed Time.
Deep Staging: Rolling far enough forward that the pre-stage bulb goes out. Your Reaction Time will be quicker, but you lose in Reaction Time.
— Tracy Herman
The fine points of a mobile classroom
Students pay close attention to Jack Beckman, an instructor for the Adventure Dragster I class at Frank Hawley’s NHRA Drag Racing School in Pomona, Calif. The small room is filled with the tension of 22 students hoping to learn how to operate a dragster.
Here’s the routine, as Beckman describes it:
– An instructor straps you in with a five-point seat belt and secures the arm restraint straps from your jacket to the car.
– He says, “Foot on the brake,” turns off the kill switch and instructs you to push the start button. You put both hands on the steering wheel.
– The instructor gestures No. 1 with his index finger, and you put it in first gear.
– Aiming for the center of two cones placed 10 feet apart at the end of the track, you drive 4 m.p.h. How fast will you be going when you take your foot off the brake? “I don’t know,” says Beckman. “You’ll start rolling forward. You might need to tickle the throttle. You might need to use the brake.”
But never “ride the brake and the gas at the same time. It’s one pedal or the other.” No “grandma” driving in this class.
– As you approach the cones, you cross your left hand over to the right portion of the steering wheel and crank it all the way to the left. Your target speed on the turn is 3 m.p.h. To make the lane, you straighten the wheel, and you’ll see the water box for the burnout.
Beckman demonstrates the signs he’ll give for “pull forward”–hands up, palms motioning toward his face–and “slow down”–hands flat, palms motioning downward.
– You drive through the water at 2 m.p.h. He’ll give the “rolling forward” sign for burn-out, and you floor the throttle for 1.7 seconds and then hit the brake with your left foot. At this point, you might need to straighten the car.
– Making sure the car is in first gear (it might have shifted to second in the burnout), you put your visor down on his signal. You inch up to the staging area at 1 m.p.h.
– First you’ll see yellow lights on the Christmas tree, then green. You apply as much pressure as you want–or floor it. When you reach the cones at the one-eighth mile mark, you close the throttle.
“The instant you close the throttle, you begin to apply the brakes; a smooth application,” Beckman says. “Five hundred pounds is how much brake pressure you need to slow the car.” A gauge on the left side of the cockpit displays the amount of pressure.
If you can’t stop with the brakes, you hit the kill switch, deploy the parachute or drive into the sand at the end of the track.
– When you reach the scoreboard, another instructor directs you to cheat right and then turn left to return for your second run. As you head back along the track, you aim for 10 m.p.h. You pull into the “pit,” put the car in park and shut it off.
After Beckman describes the drill, the class watches through the windows as a second instructor does a demo run. The sound of the engine revving for the burnout and the run is thrilling as a spectator and nerve-wracking as a potential driver.
But the time has come to do it.
— Tracy Herman.
Too little mettle to hit the pedal
When it comes to driving, I have no need for speed. But in the spirit of adventure and for the sake of the story, I decide to give drag racing a shot in the Adventure I class at Frank Hawley’s NHRA Drag Racing School in Pomona, Calif., taking copious notes and paying close attention to instructor Jack Beckman.
When the classroom portion is over, a hint of panic sets in. “That’s it?” I think to myself. “I’m supposed to drive that `thing’ now?”
Since I’m No. 5 to drive, I line up immediately at the equipment trailer. I don the pants, the jacket, the fireproof hood, the helmet, the neck roll and the gloves. In addition to intense fear, I’m feeling hot and confined by the equipment. I’m a little claustrophobic. I’ll admit it.
The instructor straps me in with a five-point seat belt and attaches my arm restraints to the car, pulling them tight. The helmet cuts off my peripheral vision and some of my hearing. I feel like I’m in a cave. As directed, I put my left foot on the brake and push the start button. I hear the roar of the engine behind my head, but I’m distracted by the pounding of my heart. At the signal, I put it in first gear and drive slowly, aiming for the center of the two cones. So far so good.
Then I crank the steering wheel to the left, which is not easy because of the arm restraints. It is a blind left turn. Panic takes over. I feel like I’m too far to the right and won’t clear the turn. When I panic, my brain freezes. I’m like a deer in the headlights.
For some reason, my instinct is to put it in reverse, back up a bit and then straighten out. I do that (which requires releasing the reverse lock), and it’s the wrong thing to do. Then I stop. Beckman walks over and gives me the kill signal. “I don’t want to do this,” I tell him.
I climb out of the car and walk back to the stands, ashamed to face my fellow classmates. One or two of them inquire, “What happened?”
“I freaked,” is the simple answer. They recommend I try again later. All I can think about is getting that confining equipment off.
— Tracy Herman.
———-
Back to school
If you feel the need for speed, you can take an Adventure Dragster class at Frank Hawley’s school in Pomona, Calif. (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
Contact:
Frank Hawley’s NHRA Drag Racing School
Program Reps: Paul Shields, Gary Stallone
Location: Pomona, Calif. (the location as published has been corrected in this text).
Phone: 888-901-RACE (7223) or 909-622-2466
Web: www.frankhawley.com
