Wolf’s Word: What’s Ahead For An Already-Fast 2016 Season

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As I get older, I come to realize many of the undeniable truths of aging; those realities that, when you’re younger, you hear but never actually believe. Or rather, never believe you’ll actually be old enough to live out those truths. And then, one day you wake up and you’re 30. One of these truths thats stands out to me in particular is that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass. Philosophers and psychologists explain it as a case of relativity — that when you are young, one year makes up a large percentage of your life as a whole. When you turn five, the whole previous year was just 20 percent of your life. When you’re 35, a year is less than three percent. As such, as you age, each subsequent year is a smaller fraction of your existence. And that, they say, is what mentally makes time speed up.

img_2564-1I can remember in my younger years that a racing season seemed like an eternity — the summers that, thankfully, felt as if they would never come to an end. And the offseason, the cold, snowy offseason, felt even longer. Just that final month of winter before the race tracks in Indiana swung open their gates seemed like it would never pass. But now, a few days shy of my 32nd birthday, I’m almost convinced that pre-season testing and the season finales occur on the same weekend.

… a few days shy of my 32nd birthday, I’m almost convinced that pre-season testing and the season finales occur on the same weekend.

Luckily, however, this acceleration of our internal clocks means the winters pass by pretty quickly (the growing number of mid-winter races in Florida, Texas, and in the Middle East don’t hurt). Already, the holidays are but a distant memory, we’ve gotten a glimpse of the new EFI-equipped Pro Stockers on the race track, and competitors are busily preparing for the first big race of the season, the U.S. Street Nationals in Bradenton, Florida (shameless plug: we’ll be there bringing you same day coverage, so look for that). In short order, drag racing will have fully cranked over and rumbled back to life, and all will be right with the world again.

The 2015 season was certainly one for the ages, and it was one well-documented in our recent Top 10 Biggest, Baddest Runs feature run in December. This list has become one of our most enjoyable in-house traditions amongst the Dragzine team, but also one of the most difficult. With so many spectacular runs across a wide range of drag racing genres, it’s simply impossible to not leave out some well-deserving candidates. Sometimes those choices are met with criticism, other times with applause, but it’s always a popular source of discussion.

Already this young season, we’ve witnessed what could be a legitimate frontrunner for our Top 10 crown this coming December, after Floridian Gary White made his unbelievable 5.77-second, 247 mph pass in Ebrahim Kanoo’s 2JZ-powered Toyota in Bahrain. And, with so many top-flight race cars being constructed for radial racing, Pro Modified, and other classes set to debut this spring, it’s really only a matter of time before several more record-setting moonshots join White’s pass on our office scratch pads.

mg5_1435While the racers are busy preparing for the season ahead, so too is everyone here at Dragzine. Recently, we added one of the NMCA West and PSCA’s most accomplished index racers, Justen Spencer, to our already-talented editorial staff. We finally, at long last, launched our Dragzine t-shirts at the Street Car Super Nationals last November, and fully plan to make Dragzine gear available to the masses in 2016.

As well, we’ve drawn up a schedule for our radial tire project car, BlownZ, that will be bringing the Dragzine team to many of the East coast’s biggest races this season. We also have a number of other big things in the works we re excited to share with you — but can’t just yet — that we believe are going to make drag racing’s leading publication even stronger in the months ahead.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m ready to get this thing started. And if my mental clock is properly calibrated, we should be handing out those championship checks any minute now — not that that’s a good thing.

About the author

Andrew Wolf

Andrew has been involved in motorsports from a very young age. Over the years, he has photographed several major auto racing events, sports, news journalism, portraiture, and everything in between. After working with the Power Automedia staff for some time on a freelance basis, Andrew joined the team in 2010.
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