Burning Down The House At Route 66

When I tell people I am a racing fan, after an initial period of confusion, they reply, “What, like NASCAR?” I am indeed a NASCAR fan, but I enjoy any kind of racing involving an engine with wheels attached, whether it’s the Indianapolis 500, a demolition derby, or drag racing.

On Saturday evening, I attended the first ever “Burndown at Sundown” at Route 66 Raceway. This was a midlevel event, so the NHRA’s biggest stars, such as John Force and Gary Scelzi, were not in attendance. The classes at the Burndown were Top Alcohol Dragster, Top Alcohol Funny Car, and Top Sportsman, which have roughly the same relationship to the Top Fuel classes and Pro Stock as the Nationwide Series does to Sprint Cup. Top speeds weren’t as fast and elapsed times weren’t as low as the top-level events I’m used to, but these classes yielded some very good racing, sometimes decided by thousandths of a second.

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It seemed to me that these dragsters had a greater tendency to shut down during a race than the top-level cars do. Perhaps this is because these teams are on a tighter budget and so cannot afford the best-quality parts. During one heat, the car in the lane nearest to me lost power, then the car in the far lane lost power, and then the car in the near lane got power back and won the race.

The Burndown also had a few events I have never seen before, even though I have attended several drag races. A number of vintage Pro Stock cars were brought out, built into vehicles such as late 70s Camaros, 1957 Bel Airs, and even a Kaiser Henry J, a product of the short-lived Kaiser Motors. Another attraction was the Wheelie Wagon, built specifically to hold a wheelie (where the vehicle rides on its rear wheels with the front wheels off the ground) for the entire quarter mile. The driver managed this feat on two separate occasions. Yet another novelty race was a snowmobile drag race. You read that correctly. Riders took heavily modified snowmobiles through the quarter mile at speeds exceeding 150 miles per hour.

The last event at the Burndown was a race between jet dragsters. I have seen jet-powered dragsters before, but I have never seen two jets race each other down the quarter mile. Nor had I ever seen jet-powered funny cars before. Unlike most dragsters, which move slowly forward to the start line before a run, the jets moved up to the line in bursts of about six inches. And what a sound they made when they hit the gas! It sounded like a Blue Angels flyover. The jets aren’t quite as fast as you think. The ones I saw took a little more than five seconds to run the quarter mile. By comparison, a Top Fuel dragster on a demonstration run earlier that day did it in less than four seconds. This may be because the jets have to throttle up, as opposed to having all their power come on at once.

Overall, I think Route 66 put on a very good show, and I hope this becomes an annual event. It’s a good opportunity to showcase both midlevel talent and unusual types of drag racing that don’t get a lot of attention. Like snowmobiles.