NHRA - Fire Breathing Monsters.... Why I'm addicted

A couple of months ago I came across a video on YouTube titled "NHRA- Fire Breathing Monsters" that captures what I love about the sport. The video is an aggressive and noisy - yet surprisingly intimate - tribute to the cars that run in the NHRA Mello Yellow Drag Racing Series. And if anyone where ever to ask me why I drag race I would definitely tell them to look up this video, as further illustration as to my reasons for loving the sport.

Click here to watch the video (which is also available in 4K on YouTube).

What sets drag racing apart from any other form of professional motorsport is that the actual racing is condensed from the usual 90-120 minutes to just four runs of 4-6 seconds. Besides, the instant acceleration worth some 3 G's, what a 0.96 second to the sixty foot mark would give one, is out of this world. I can only imagine what it would feel like at 5 G's. And, mind you that some crucial stuff (like excessive wheel spin) must be managed while one is experiencing this much force of gravity. This is the main reason why other types of race car drivers always decline to drive a top fuel car. In 2011 Lewis Hamilton and Tony Stewart swapped seats for a SPEED Channel special but that would be impossible with a top fuel or funny car driver.
Besides the above mentioned, there are many other reasons why I am addicted to the sport. The comradery is great with on track rivals helping each other out in the pits with parts and labour if necessary. Legendary doorslammer racer Pat Musi has been seen in our pits giving hard earned advise and parts. And throughout the various levels of the sport, you will find that it is a family centered activity, in that everyone pitches it. It's the greatest at the grass root level.

On how it all started for me, my father Eduardo, affectionately called Eddie, started racing cars in his late teens when he was still living in Aruba. When I was a young child he got the drag racing bug in Curaçao. As I would often hang around him in his garage I was given a tin can of gasoline and an old brush and with which I would clean oily nuts and bolts. So basically my earliest memories are of the smell of gasoline and oil, as I stood around my dad and his palls while they supped up a Vega, with which he terrorized the streets... those poor garbage collectors. After the Vega came a Malibu named "Whathehell" which he drag raced with at the infamous Koral Tabak drag strip, Curaçao.

After about a 15 year hiatus my older brother took over the old Whathehell Malibu and drove it until he moved on to a 500 c.i. pro stock, that used to be Ron Krisher's backup car. Ron was an 8-time winner in the [professional] pro stock category in the NHRA. Again I had the opportunity to be close to the action, but this time at a much higher level, which I really enjoyed. This spurred me to attend a Super Gas course with Frank Hawley. I can still remember him telling me to do lengthy burnouts with my own tires. Couldn't help it, Frank.

And so, one can see that the racing seed was planted deep in my soul early on and was only fully awakened some seven years ago. After going on a sabbatical from work I thought the time had come to buy my own car, and after a couple of years of driving for the old Whathehell team I set out on my own with Danny de Kort Motorsports and Steven Spiess' old Chevy Cobalt and an old engine from Elite Motorsports. And though we have not had the chance to race as often as one would like, I am really confident about the future. There are still great drag racing achievements out there.

In addition to the above mentioned foundation, the FulTrot blog was started as a vent for my other passion, which is motorsports in general. Occasional, I combine these two passions to create some pretty good motorsport-themed fundraisers for our drag racing operation.

Thanks for reading.

Photo credit: NHRA / JFR
Video courtesy: NHRA - RED Digital Cinema