The 2015 NHRA Lucas Oil North Central Division Alcohol Regional drag race was held at Beech Bend Raceway on August 28-30. I went on Saturday and spent the day and it was awesome. Every alcohol class was represented, and I well and truly got my speed fix for the week!
Lots of photographs below, and a little bit of commentary. Not much commentary though, I’m a more of a photographer than a writer.
RANDOM SHOTS FROM MY PIT WALK |
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| A rather long pit walk, I might add. And even then I probably didn’t see a third of the cars and probably didn’t photograph 1% of them. Beech Bend has a LOT of room to park race cars and they were bumper to bumper for this event. Lots and lots of gorgeous racecars. I can’t think of a better way to spend a late summer day? | ||||
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ON THE TRACK! |
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| As usual, enough race cars sitting still. Time for some that are in motion! LOTS of motion! And lots of noise! | ||||
Super Gas … |
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Super Stock … |
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The inevitable oil-down. Sooner or later someone is going to break an engine and dump oil on the track. Obviously the cars can’t go through it so it has to be cleaned up. The track crews are so well-trained that once they are finished the track is as good as it was before, and in some cases even better. They clean the oil up entirely, groom the track, and it’s like it never even happened. | |||
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Top Dragster … |
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Top Sportsman … |
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Top Alcohol Funny Car … |
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| There are probably more shots of funny cars and top alcohol dragsters during their burnouts than there are during the runs themselves. There is a simple reason for that: I selfishly like to actually watch the runs rather than take photographs of them. Sorry, just a funny habit I have since these two classes (and the nitro classes at those events) are what I come to see. I absolutely love the sensation of them making a pass and it’s hard for me to concentrate on taking photographs when it happens. | ||||
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Look closely at the purple / yellow / orange funny car in the first row above. You can see that during his pass the butterflies of his injector are only partially open. This is normal during the burnout but not during the actual run itself. The photograph to the left clearly shows that the car in the near lane has his injector butterflies wide open but the car in the far lane does not. I found the team in the pit later and mentioned it to one of the mechanics who then took a look at my photograph. He said the owner needed to see that and called to him, however he was busy working on the clutch. I hung around for about 10 minutes but he never got around to taking a look. Hope you guys got it straightened out since it probably had something to do with that poor run. |
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Top Alcohol Dragster … |
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