Saturday, July 19, 1,975 "THE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Seven The dragway Strp to the big time By PAUL HASKINS Their noses to the asphalt, their gaudy back ends tilted skyward, with tailpipes vibrating like a rattler poised to attack, the dragsters hug the starting line and wait for the green light. The super-charged en- gines spit out their impatience in a rapid series of defeaning accelerations and short-lived power-downs. Feet, depressed on the clutch pedals, are all that prevent the ear-splitting standstill from erupting into an unchecked and ungodly explosion of energy that will carry them past the far end of the 1300 foot track in less than 13 seconds. The scene is Detroit Dragway, a living monument to motor city culture, less refined, perhaps, than the Fischer Theater or the Institute of Art, yet indelibly etched on the subconscience of thousands of Detroiters who have soaked up daily a steady diet of the famed "Sibley at Dix" dragway radio bypes since birth. Re- plete with the roar of a hundred hungry engines, echo-chamber sound effects, and an announcer paid on a words per minute basis, the Detroit Dragway commercials, classics of their period, are so peaked with adrenalin that ohe wonders if the raceway itself could match the excitement of the radio spots. AS A MATTER of fact it doesn't-not quite anyway. The action is there and all out to be sure, but it's intermittent and squeezed between a series of mind deadening intermissions. The dragway is surrounded by a hodgepodge of structures in a state of repair roughly equivalent to that of the Bikini Island village square. Though a crashing let down for the one shot visitor, such sore spots and impositions are trifling matters for the dragster jockeys milling about the pits and the handful of die-hard spectators who, looking like so many grazingcattle, sit partiallysubmerged in the prairie grass concealing the splinter-plank benches beneath them. HE DRIVERS come to race, and racing is all they are concerned with once they've paid the six dollar entree fee at the .gate. The drigway may appear ram- shackle to outsiders, but for what it can do for the drivers pride in their -machine, the old place may as well be Indi or the Bonneville Salt Flats. The thrill of head to head competition against a worthy opponent has been part of the American auto- motive tradition since the days of Henry the I. Cross-country and ovaltrack racing, which place a premium on handling skill as well as raw speed, can trace their colorful tradition back to the birth of the automobile. It wasn't until the 1950s that sanctioned The Saturday Magazine HOVERING.OVER HIS engine, a dragster at the Detroit Dragway tunes, oils, and generally prepares his car for the quarter mile race he is about tb participate in. Hard core dragsters pour their money and heart into their machines, hoping they will carry their drivers to the big time racing. There each vehicle will be inspected from the inside out, placed in one of over 50 classes which indicate engine size, weight ratio and transmission type (manual or automatic). The engine size, in cubic inches, is smeared on the windshield with a white shoe polish applicator, and the car's glass is marked, on the side window. Besides assigning each car to a class, the tech line inspectors also check to make sure that every zar meets the minimum safety standards set by the United Hot Rod Association (UHRSA), a second-string oversight group under whose auspices the Detroit Dragway and the Motor City track operate. ONCE A CAR gets past the inspectors (and almost anything with four wheels and a seat belt does), it bolts off to join the double line of dragsters revving it 20-year-old Mike Meyers, a drag-racing buff who makes it down most weekends with five or six of his racing friends from Redford Township. "This is something that just a regular guy can come down and do." In the major circuits, usually supervised ,by the more established National Hot Rod Association, spon- sors have bigger names and more money to throw around-as do the racers. The dragsters are faster and flashier, and the cars are bigger and 'more com- fortable. But then again, in the -big time you can't just drive your old pickup or stripped Pinto out and race it if you had a mind to, and that is what the Detroit Dragway is all about. EACH WEEK, a couple of unadorned street cars will find their way into the dragster pack-the drivers out for a one-time-only cheap thrill and the chance to tell their friends that they raced at the track. But at the heart of the track's survival rests a steady core of drivers who take their racing seriously and come out every week. A few of the racers, the ones with the most nerve, the best cars and the temerity to hold fast to an elusive dream, plan to make the sport their life and drag race for a living. Nearly all of them put healthy chunks of their pay checks and free time into the maintenance and improvement of their car. Hours each day during the week are syent making sure that the car will be at its best for the weekend. See DRAG, Page 9 w ewe w w r, w r w i drag-racing got off the ground, providing a racing forum with speed and immediacy as its only two criteria. The new sport caught fire and proliferated over the next fifteen years. Strips sprung up across the country, forming 'a stronghold in the sunny southwest but extend- ing into such unlikely locales as Long Island and the Northern Plains states. By the e'arly seventies, drag racing's popularity be- gan to subside. Some tracks shut down, others slashed their racing calendars, and enthusiasts feared that the sport was fated to burn out before it ever got started. ' ODAY'S RACING buffs, like Tom Gilmore, manager of the Detroit Dragway and its sister track, Motor City Dragway, say dragster mania is on the rise again. You wouldn't know it by the condition of Tom's track, complex. But then, the run-down refreshment stand and weed-spotted gravel pit are hardly a reflection of fire in the eyes of those men who dream of glory, however fleeting, for themselves and their cars. The contestants converge on the Taylor dragway with all manners of four wheelers every Saturday and Sunday during the summer, numbering, as the lot attendant sees it, "from 12 to 200 depending on the weather." The cars begin arriving hours before the first tirs trials, and head for the Tech Line set a couple hun- dred feet from the gate and to one side of the track. up behind the starting line before the time trials begin. In the time trials, just as in the eliminations that will follow, the starting light sequencer-a vertical bat- tery of lights flashed in series, from top 'to bottom, with green light flashing last and indicating the start- sends pair after pair of cars hurtling down the track in thiry second intervals. But unlike the eliminations, the time trials produce no losers. They're simply tiral heats, run to handicap each car before the finals and to give the drivers a chance to work out any kinks which might be plaguing their charges before the finals. Except on special occasions, the cars on display at the dragway have to split their time between week- end racing and the providing transportation rest of the week. Though an elite few are loaded with high per- formance luxuries designed to achieve the most speed in the least time, even most cars are called on to meet the workhorse tasks of stop-and-go driving during their owners off-track hours. ONLY ONCE, maybe twice a year, does a dragway crowd get a chance to feast their eyes on the heavily financed, high performance pro-stocks, late model stock car dragsters, funny cars (custom built dragsters with plastic bodies), and powerhouse fuel dragsters or rails (the long, sleek skeletal steel frame numbers with bicycle tires in front and an engine that could move Mt. Everest mounted behind the driver). - "Most of these cars are street and strip," explains A Daiis Pboto by STEVE KAGAN DRAG RACING IS EXCITING, bu tonly intermit- tently. Most of the time, the drivers are forced to wait around for their turn at the starting line. And on sunny Sundays, it's a lot nicer outside than inside their cars.