Wolf’s Word: The Drag Race Where Nothing Seemed Impossible

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Where the epic performance battle waged between Frankie “The Madman” Taylor and Kuwait native Turky Al Zafiri at the inaugural Street Car Super Nationals Anarchy At The Arch in St. Louis ranks among the all-time great acts in drag racing history could be debated for days, but there are two undeniable facts we can take away from it: those who were there to witness it will be telling of that race for years to come, and those who weren’t…well, they missed out.

DSC_1164And this Editor? I’m just proud to say I was there to witness what went down under the lights on those three unbelievable nights at the Gateway Motorsports Park with my own two eyes. Because on those three evenings, we weren’t reporters, or photographers, or track officials, or crew members —we were all fans, collectively holding our breath each and every time those two drivers bumped into the beams. We were in awe, and regardless of our roles in the event, we dropped what we were doing and we watched, because this was history; it was uncharted territory, and it represented everything that’s great about the sport of drag racing.

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Even NHRA Mello Yello Series chief starter Mark Lyle, who makes his living standing between the quickest accelerating vehicles on planet earth, could only turn to the crews and officials behind him after the scoreboards lit up and say, “wow”. Because in that moment, there was little else to say.

DSC_1445You see, what occurred at the first Street Car Super Nationals ever held outside of The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on the hottest weekend the Midwest had seen all summer long was, in a sense, surreal. It was almost too much to take in, and if we hadn’t been there to see it, we may not believe it. Sure, those kinds of numbers — 5.40’s at more than 270 miles per hour — were fully expected given the kind of eighth-mile numbers run-what-ya-brung Pro Mods have been putting down for years, but they were the kinds of elapsed times and speeds we weren’t sure we’d ever see. That, in large part, is because there are few racers willing to try their hand at the quarter-mile and even fewer promoters open to taking on the risk of such an event.

But records are made to be broken, and Frankie Taylor and his brother, Paul, along with little-known Kuwaiti driver Al Zafiri and his esteemed turbo tuner Steve Petty arrived at Mel Roth’s free-for-all event with a mission, and what played out was akin to Major League ballplayers having a home run derby with aluminum bats. It got real. And not to downplay the rest of the categories at the Anarchy At The Arch, who put on an absolutely spectacular show in their own right, but they were, in all honesty, an afterthought on this historic weekend. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but it was.

DSC_1512Whether we’ll see door cars go quicker and faster than the 5.46-second, 272 miles per hour records posted in that already-legendary final round remains to be known, but even if they are, it won’t top St. Louis. It can’t top St. Louis. Because Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it any better — the quickest blower car and the quickest turbo car in the world, trading blows like a pair of bloodied UFC fighters, meeting in the final round and leaving absolutely nothing on the table in the quickest and fastest side-by-side race in history by a country mile.

How Fast Is Too Fast?

But what happened in St. Louis begs a number of questions: How fast is too fast? And what does this event mean for the sport of drag racing?

DSC_0889It’s no secret that the National Hot Rod Association is less than keen on suspended, full-bodied door cars going that quick and that fast on their sanctioned race tracks. They’ve made that point known. And many of the players in the Pro Modified game are in full agreement, which is why big-time door car racing has gone almost exclusively to 660-feet over the last decade. Not only is that second eighth-mile harder on parts, but we don’t know what a chassis certified for 6.00-seconds can withstand, nor do we know the exact limits of a liner tire designed for Top Alcohol Dragsters and Funny Cars and Pro Mods that aren’t running 272 miles per hour.

DSC_6425That said, the buzz created by this one event and these two race teams is hard to deny. Quarter-mile Outlaw Pro Mod racing had been all but given up on by the masses — like anyone expecting to ever see sub-four second rocket cars again. We’d come to accept that the eighth-mile was as good as it was going to get. But this event seems to have reignited the flame. And that’s because people want to see big numbers.

I’ve said it in this column before and I’ll say it again: drag racing is about performance more than anything else. It always has been and it always will be, and no amount of side-by-side, decided-by-inches drag races is ever going to change it. No one remembers who won Top Fuel in Gainesville in 1992 or Pro Stock at Englishtown in 1994, but they can sure tell you what happened there.

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Had the Anarchy At The Arch been an eighth-mile event, Taylor could have just as well run 3.47 (bettering his all-time performance mark of 3.48-seconds) and it would’ve been lost on all but the hardcore few. No, it was these quarter-mile moonshots that got the entire drag racing world talking, and that isn’t something that should just be swept away, left to join such unpopular decisions as 1,000-foot nitro racing in the annals of history.

The precedent in drag racing when something seems as its limits is to legislate it out of existence, but as long as there are racers with the cajones to make a full pull and promoters willing to let it happen, we should be searching for solutions, not wielding a judges gavel. There are too many bright minds and talented race car drivers in this game for that to be the final fate of the continual pursuit of history.

The reality is, there aren’t the “wow” moments in drag racing that there once were, as performances have largely stalemated and barriers have long-since been broken, but for three nights in the shadow of the Gateway Arch, nothing seemed impossible. You should’ve been there to see it.

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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