Open-wheel racing is popular globally and has a following in the U.S., but it is nowhere near the popularity of the reigning champ, NASCAR. The driver’s head is completely exposed, so in the instance of a wreck, parts and road debris can hit them in the helmet, and the extreme horsepower married to the cars' lack of weight makes them difficult to learn and control. Since they are distinctly single-seated, they are incredibly light, with race day examples weighing 1,650 pounds. These cars are the single-seat missiles that we see in places like Formula 1. Open-wheel racing gets its name from the open wheels, i.e., no fenders, no skirts, no wheel wells. Since then, it has evolved a lot, with funny cars and top-fuel dragsters pushing the envelope above 300 miles per hour, but drag racing remains a pure form of racing where you can run a street-legal car on the track with no sponsors just for fun and bragging rights. Classes of vehicles were grouped into cars with approximately the same body style and size, i.e., Chargers versus Camaros, etc. Traditionally, there were few restrictions on what modifications were acceptable. It is still the embodiment of the old day of hot-rodding the car you own, as so many cars racing are street-legal machines. They are a form of racing still accessible to the common man drag strips are plentiful across the nation, and amateur drivers can bring their cars to the strip and test their mettle and machine. The drags are a lot different than road racing. It is much easier to see a quarter of a mile down a road than half a mile. It was the product of finding a distance that was easy to measure on an open road and keeping the distance short since longer distances would increase the risk. Incidentally, the quarter-mile distance appears to be mostly arbitrary. The winner was the winner, the times were accurate, and the cars were still street legal - if only enough to drive home at the end of the night. Drivers are happy because it is fair there is no arguing that someone got the jump or crossed the line first. The local authorities are happy because they keep dangerous races off public roads. But, of course, this did pose some real danger to the drivers and potential spectators because they were running on open roads with no shoulders.ĭuring this time, drag strips popped up all over the states because entrepreneurs could lay half a mile of asphalt down in two lanes, throw up a time-keeping device and a light tree, add some bleachers, and voila, a drag race strip was born. The premise of the drags has not changed: two cars side-by-side for a standing start going to a predetermined point down the road. The quarter-mile drags are an old form of American racing, dating back to the post-World War II era when teenagers would routinely soup up their cars and run them in the straightaways on rural roads.
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