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This veteran drag racer gets the chance to rip up a road course.
A couple of weeks ago, we had a track day set up at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ. While I can’t divulge any information on what we did there, what I can tell you is that the testing is related to upcoming articles you can read about in MM&FF, as well as myself having a whole lot of fun. Thanks to Jeff Lacina, MM&FF columnist, SVTOA instructor, and employee of ProCharger, I got the chance to sling some corners in both the ProCharger Mustang as well as the track’s Fox-body school car (courtesy of Chris Winter).
You have to realize that since I was a kid, I have always been involved in drag racing. My Dad got myself and my brother involved with the NHRA Jr. Drag Racing program with a Christmas present in 1993-a brand new Jr. Dragster. I was 12 and my brother was 9. Since then, we both have hit the quarter-mile regularly, with a good amount of success. We were both track champions at Island Dragway in both the Jr. Dragster and Street Eliminator classes, and we have both won the NHRA Division 1 Bracket Finals-with my brother going on to win the world title in California in ’03. Throw in my NHRA Super Comp divisional win in 2002 and my brother finishing second in NHRA Super Street points in 2006, and you can see that for a majority of both of our lives, drag racing has been our choice of motorsports flavor.
While I had always had a passing interest in throwing a car around a road course, my experience was limited mostly to watching it on television and/or riding shotgun with MM&FF Editor Evan Smith as he wrung out the latest and greatest Pony at the E-Town facility. That was until Jeff gave me the finer points of road racing, starting with the basics, and then had me strap in and do it myself.
While I could tell you all about what I learned, that would take the fun out of telling you about the road course school I attended a few days later in an upcoming web article. In the meantime, check out the ProCharger car I was riding in with Jeff, the photos taken by Super Chevy staffers Mike Ficacci and Danny Ryder, and check back next week as I dig in to road racing from a drag racer’s view point.
Now if I could only beat that Corvette convertible in the photos myself…
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