The zMAX Dragway

Back on October 17, 2011, I wrote a blog on "TV Tommy" Ivo, who brilliantly thought if two is good, then four must be much better and built himself back in 1961 a four-engined dragster. zMAX Dragway must have been created using the same vision...I think.

The zMAX Dragway is a state-of-the-art quarter mile drag strip, the only one of its kind with four lanes, instead of the customary two, and is the only all-concrete drag strip as well in the U.S.

Tomorrow starts one of the greatest spectacles in drag racing, the so-called Four-Wide Nationals, at the Bellagio of dragstrips. Lucky fans will get to see the fastest accelerating machines on the planet release a 30.000 horsepower assault on zMAX dragway. That's almost more than the entire starting grid of the Daytona 500!

Antron Brown, driver of the Matco Top Fuel dragster explained this event best.

"When you say 'a spectacle,' you're talking about 30.000 horsepower. Raw, ground-pounding, asphalt-ripping horsepower, and we are going to get it done all in one shot. When you hear that thing hit, you're hearing this percussion going, and everybody thinks it's a category 4 earthquake, and it's nothing but our Top Fuel and Funny Cars ripping up that concrete at zMAX Dragway."

Last year's winner, Jack Beckman, explained how he feels to be behind the starting line during the event.

"When we roll up to the starting line, when it's two-wide and the pair in front of us step on the trottle, it's pretty impressive, and I didn't think anything could top that. When you roll up there four-wide and the ones in front of you step on the trottle, our bodies are held up by these big metal poles; I swear it seems like that thing is going to snap in half and the body is going to fall down."

And it is not easy racing here. Tony Schumacher's second-round loss last year stands as a cautionary tale for why Four-Wide isn't so beloved by those in the cockpit.

"I didn't know what the car in the left and right lanes were doing, so I kept pedaling it, blew up, oiled the track down and lost 10 point,"recounted Schumacher. "[The format] forces me to do that. I'm glad it's not in the Countdown, but it's something different. I've got a lot of trophies on the shelf, and I don't have a Four-Wide yet. I want one."

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Thanks for reading.

Source: NHRA, Drag Illustrated