Over the weekend, the fabled Byron Dragway in upstate Illinois hosted its annual Summer Thunder Weekend event, featuring among other things, a field of Drag Radial cars with the Midwest Outlaw Racing Series. Series regular Bob D’Andrea and his third-generation Camaro were a part of said field, and singlehandedly delivered a show worth every penny of the 15 bucks it costs spectators to get in the gate.
Earlier in the afternoon, D’Andrea pulled a moonshot, dragging he bumper down the Byron racing surface before lifting and slamming the nose back to the ground. That was entertaining — and photogenic — enough, but this was just a precursor of things to come.
Later in the evening hours under the lights, with the air conditions ripe for making a little additional horsepower, D’Andrea put his earlier show to shame, climbing up onto the bumper and powering the rear wheels right off the pavement for a brief period of time. But it wasn’t the fact that the nose was sky-high at this point that made things hairy for both D’Andrea, but rather, it was where he was headed.
After dancing around on no wheels, then three, and then two, D’Andrea finally realized he was headed right toward the centerline and into the path of his competitor and wisely lifted. But the hard impact and his quick stabbing of the throttle to attempt to reign the car back into his own lane at the same time sent the nose of the Camaro back up into the air once more before slamming to earth a second time. If you could draw any parallels between drag racing and bull riding, this was it.
Fortunately, D’Andrea’s opponent had been watching out of the corner of his eye the whole time and anticipated what was about to occur, piling on the binders to avoid what could’ve very well been a nasty collision.
Video courtesy Mike Quezada