You know what drag racing is sorely missing these days? Besides, well…a lot of things? It’s missing the unexpected. The entertaining. The heated moments. A reason to get up out of your seat and cheer.

Compile a mental list of the most exciting drag races in the last quarter century, and the famous starting line burndowns between Warren Johnson and Scott Geoffrion in 1994 and Doug Herbert and Clay Millican a decade later have to be right at the top. But moments like these are much too few and far between in this day and age of racing.

At the recent NHRA Summernationals, however, the son of one of the all-time great crowdpleasers, Billy Glidden, and another second-generation racer, Troy Coughlin, gave the Englishtown, New Jersey faithful reason to whistle and applaud when they engaged in a classic starting line staging duel. And although to our knowledge neither a war of words nor a fist fight broke out after this one, it provided some semblance of a rivalry amongst all of the politically correct handshakes and hugs that this once rivalry-filled sport has whittled itself down to.

During their second round matchup in Pro Modified, Glidden and Coughlin, facing one another for the very first time in eliminations (but probably not for the first time ever, given their NMCA Pro Street backgrounds) sat for a minute and 20 seconds in the pre-stage beams, before Coughlin finally spooled his twin-turbochargers and pressed Glidden into the stage beam. The pair sat idly, with no signs of movement by either party, long enough that Coughlin’s crew chief, Steve Petty, even pulled out and lit a cigarette as he joined the many thousands in attendance waiting on someone to finally break.

In the end, the virtually unshakeable Glidden got the best of Coughlin, taking a nearly three tenths of a second advantage out of the gate and charging to a consistent 6.02 as Coughlin sputtered, slowed, and oiled down the race track.