Time for another drag racing reunion!

This time we headed over to Las Vegas, NV to attend the 2012 NHRA Big O Tire Nationals, in lieu of going to Bakersfield for the California Hot Rod Reunion which was the week before. Rusty said, let’s go watch the big guys this year, and since it has been many years since I had been to an NHRA meet it sounded like a great idea. The top fuel cars are now in the 3.70s and well above 300 MPH for 1000 ft instead of a quarter mile. The nitro funny cars are not far behind in the low 4s and 300+ MPH as well. All in all NHRA did not disappoint.

We arrived Thursday evening with our kitty, Bluebell who is now 18 and is diabetic and needs her blood sugar levels checked daily and requires an insulin injection every two to three days. This was her 1st long car trip and she settled in pretty well.

We used the pop up kennel that Carol Elliott had found for us when we had to bring Bailey along with us a few years ago. Bluebell is perhaps more of a back seat driver than Bailey was. She doesn’t care for fast starts, quick lane changes our quick stops and really dislikes the potholes in I40! In all of these cases she makes her displeasure very loudly known, especially if she had been sleeping. The other thing that she missed were her kids, during the day time and evening she behaved normally, i.e. she slept like all cats do, however after we went to bed every night she would wander the room loudly calling for the other cats in our home community, unfortunately Michelle and I didn’t qualify and so we spent most of every night trying to calm her Dow and keep her quiet. Once the sun was up she settled down and went to sleep.

Rusty drove down from Utah with one of his daughters, Wendy and her husband Brian on Thursday as well. Bill and Joe drove up from Torrance, CA on Friday AM and meet us at the track. Mike left Infinion Raceway and went back to work for Flow Master and as luck would have it would be flying into Vegas on Sunday to setup the Flow Master booth at SEMA that was opening this week. Joe and Bill had to leave on Sunday afternoon to get back home before Monday, so Rusty, Michelle and I were planning on meeting Mike for dinner on Sunday night. As luck would have it, Hurricane Sandy pretty much brought all air travel to a standstill on Sunday and Mike wasn’t able to get out of the Bay Area until quite late Sunday night.

My, the changes in drag racing over the last 20 yrs or so have been remarkable, let alone trying to compare what is going on today with what we did in the 60’s. Today it is all about big money and corporate sponsors, I guess that hasn’t changed much over the years but it really has drove the price of admission, food and beverages to the moon. A four day ticket package was $134 for a reserved seat, which did have a back! Seems like most burgers etc were in the $7-10 range. Beer was $7/can and a bottle of water was $4! Up until now we thought that the vendors at Goodguys were ripping folks off, but this set a new standard for the poor folks from Show Low!

Having said that, the races were very well done, with a minimum of down time due to oil downs etc. The track crew managed the clean ups, mostly Top Fuel, handily and kept the program moving along. I was only able to bring my small FujiFilm X100 camera into the races, since they have strict probation on pro style camera equipment and were searching all bags being brought into the races, so not having a telephoto at hand made my photographic efforts from the stands lacking any close up detail! I did get enough shots to give a fair idea out what it was like from the view point of someone in the 6th row seats half way down the track. A couple of carry overs from days long past, Chris Karamesines still is campaigning a top fuel dragster and was able to qualify for the 16 car field, but at 83 yrs old his reaction times are not able to cut the lights like the young guys. John Force is still plugging away as is Jim Head in the funny car ranks and Warren Johnson is still doing fairly well in Pro Stock, although he is now running a MOPAR which put a smile on my face. For me, the best races were in alcohol funny car and pro stock. Seems like everyone was running well with few breakages and very close times.

2012 NHRA Las Vegas Nationals