[Jeff Higgins]

Ah yes, Top Fuel. I have been a rabid fan all of my life. This was the first year I can remember that I did not go see them at SIR (I'm recovering from a bit of soreness sustained in a car wreck). These things should top the list of must-see for anyone who considers himself a gearhead of any kind. Simply unbelievable on so many levels.

Imagine if your chest were a speed bag and Mike Tyson was taking a light workout on it. A pair of top fuel cars coming out of the hole will make you feel just like that. They will literally make your face shake, along with your entire body. Ever watch the Blue Angels? One top fuel car would drown out all of them, on afterburner, in unison.

Todd is right; they go anything but straight. They don't even stage them straight; they are pointed several degrees right. They hit so hard coming out of the hole that the drivers cannot even see; Connie Kalita says they are going purely on instinct for the first couple hundred feet. And they do look for a certain amount of "tire speed" as they call it; it is like the "slip angle" we are familiar with when cornering a tire; best grip is when it is sliding just ever so. Too much in top fuel is called "black tracking", and you can see two black stripes all the way down the track. It is said they hit 50 mph on the first full tire rotation out of the hole.

The driver cannot shut the car off, but not because they diesel after losing the spark plugs. Both plugs fire all the way down the track on most runs. They are dual plugged for different reasons than we would dual plug; the second one is a back-up. They run just fine on one. They do often lose one on a run, sometimes both in the same cylinder. You can see immediately when they "drop a cylinder"; the fire goes out and it turns into a nitro sprinkler, with raw fuel just spraying out the pipe.

The reason the driver cannot shut it down is purely NHRA safety rules. No fuel lines or electrical circuts, or connections to either, are allowed in the cockpit with the driver. It has to run out of fuel to shut down. If you ever see one getting shut down on the line or in the bleach box, you will notice a crew member has to do it from the outside.

Anyway, it's great good fun to watch these guys. It has, like all motorsports, gotten very specialized and sophisticated. More so than you might think; check them out some time.