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Drag racers: There's no time to think, it's ‘all about right now'

By Ron Green Jr. - The Charlotte Observer

CONCORD, N.C. -- When someone asks Jack Beckman what it feels like to drive a vehicle capable of going from 0 to 300 miles per hour in four seconds — either a skinny Top Fuel dragster or a muscled-up Funny Car — it's tough for him to explain.

It's only 1,000 feet of straightaway. How much driving can there be?

“I tell people to picture the fastest roller coaster in the world only with no tracks, and you're in charge when they hand you the steering wheel,” said Beckman, the defending Funny Car champion in the NHRA Carolinas Nationals this weekend at zMax Dragway.

Driving dragsters — there are four professional categories — requires a blend of science, skill and art.

It happens in a blur of kidney-shaking thunder, tire smoke and stunning speed.

What looks from the bleachers like a driver hanging on to the end of a rocket is, in fact, more involved that it appears.

The cars might appear to go straight — that's the idea — but drivers are constantly working the wheel as they roar down the track, working to keep the car in the fast groove and out of the walls.

“If you're going straight, it's quite simple to drive,” said Jeg Coughlin, who leads the points in the pro stock division which features 1,400-horsepower cars that go from sitting still to 100 miles per hour in 1.5 seconds.

“But if the car's not efficient, it's the driver's job to navigate it. Any mistake scrubs speed, and that's a no-no.”

For all the big numbers in drag racing — the top cars run in the range of 320 miles per hour — success or failure often is determined by hundredths of a second in qualifying and elimination rounds.

Cars will make four qualifying runs (two today, two Saturday), and the top 16 will advance to Sunday's elimination rounds where they will race head-to-head in a tournament-style bracket.

The two top divisions — top fuel and funny car — are where it gets extreme. Top fuel dragsters, the skinny, needle-nosed cars, and funny cars, which feature more traditional bodies, generate more than 7,000 horsepower and reach 100 miles per hour in less than one second.

“A (top fuel) dragster is like a Ferrari at 200 on the Autobahn. You want to whisper on the steering wheel,” said Beckman, who taught drag racing for 11 years.

“A funny car is like a Winnebago with the right front flat in a crosswind. There's never a run in funny car when you're not moving a steering wheel. Sometimes, we're turning it 90 degrees and it's still going straight.”

On a full weekend — that means reaching the elimination finals — cars and drivers will make no more than eight runs. At approximately four seconds apiece, that's about 32 seconds of driving.

It feels longer than that.

“It's like slow motion to us,” said Brandon Bernstein, fourth in the top fuel points race. “To you, it's three or four seconds. When you're in the car, everything slows down. It seems like it's 10 or 12 seconds to us.”

For drivers, it's critical to hit the throttle as close as possible to the instant the tree of starting lights goes green. The fastest have been clocked at a 7/1000ths of a second response time.

They hit the gas (nitromethane in this case), release the hand brake and go, careful not to spin the tires at the start.

Drivers are pulling more than 5Gs while in the car.

“When you drive a top fuel dragster, it makes your backbone push back,” points leader Antron Brown said. “It makes your eyeballs push back in your head. It makes your eyes water.

“They don't roll back, but they push in your head and when you come out the other end, you can feel them pushing back out.”

That's happening while the car's moving.

“I can show you in-car cameras where we may turn the wheel more in a thousand feet than NASCAR guys do in two laps,” Brown says. “When you're trying to put 8,000 horsepower to the ground, one (rear) tire grows quicker than the other, so your vehicle starts darting around.

“You're constantly on the wheel, left, right, left, left … The vehicle is trying to do anything but go straight.”

Thinking, in a sense, is overrated. Reacting isn't.

“If you think about doing it, it's too late,” Brown said.

Sitting in the car, strapped in tight and with a limited field of vision, it is, literally, a rush for the drivers.

“Simply amazing,” six-time world champion Tony Schumacher said. “It's kind of the ultimate, bottom of the ninth, crunch time, bases-loaded, full-count and you're up situation.

“You can see the finish line. You're at the start line. There's a guy next to you making 8,000 horsepower, and it's all about right now.”