REACTION TIME

By Susan Wade

Two drivers.

Two cars.

Two tune-ups.

Two narrow ribbons of asphalt.

One prize.

That winning E.T. slip.

Drag racing and its elapsed times. It seems like such a simple proposition, such a  simple sport.

It is and it isn’t.

The embodiment of the post-World War II American car culture, drag racing is the late Wally Parks’ legacy — and the focus of this new “Reaction Time” column.

Parks, the patriarch of drag racing and the patron saint of reckless street toughs, founded the National Hot Rod Ass’n. in 1951. Or as “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, who in 2001 was voted the No. 1 drag racer in the sanctioning body’s history, put it, “Wally took a bunch of leather-jacketed hoodlums off the street and made them legitimate.”

Car racing was at a fever pitch when Parks came home from his World War II military service. But the dry lake beds of the Mojave Desert and abandoned air strips weren’t going to hold this new breed of restless tinkerers and aggressive personalities who had just shown in the European and Pacific theatres that they could conquer the world. America’s love affair with cars was in its heyday.

Parks had some experience fiddling around with Chevy fours and stripped-down Model Ts as a teenager, but he was becoming corporate-savvy by then. He heard the car-crowd’s crescendo and knew he had to act. He had the skills to lead, had proven that by helping form the SCTA — the Southern California Timing Association, which was preoccupied with land-speed-record events — in 1937. He also had helped publishing partners Bob Petersen and Bob Lindsay get Hot Rod Magazine off the ground. He put his stamp on the classic magazine as editor. His resume also included being a road-test driver and process engineer for General Motors. So he knew how to gather likeminded people to focus on a common cause.

And with guidance from the Boy Scouts of America handbook, he crafted the NHRA.

“My role is the dreamer,” Parks said in a 2004 in a conversation about the explosive growth of the organization. “I’m not a businessman. Most of my life I’ve been in journalism and public relations. I sit around thinking up dumb ideas and seeing what becomes of them. We made this up as we went along. Of course, there’s always room to improve what we’re doing — if we ever figure out what it is.”

Everyone seems to have a different vision of what drag racing truly is.

Dean Skuza, one of the more colorful Funny Car drivers in a rich history of them, said of drag racers, “We don’t conserve tires. We don’t conserve fuel. We don’t conserve nothin’! What’s more American than that?!”

Former Pro Stock driver Tom Martino, said, “We are the epitome of the American people.” And he likened his doorslammer car to a fruit cart: “Everything on there is perishable. It’s only going to go bad — so use it!

That attitude is what makes drag racing the most dazzling of motorsports, the sleekest, sexiest, scariest — and shortest but satisfying. If it were vying for an Academy Award, it might win an Oscar for best sound, best cinematography, most original screenplay, best leading actor, best leading actress, best supporting actors and actresses, and above all, best special effects.

Two-time Funny Car champion Tony Pedregon absorbed all that as a child. He and brothers Cruz and Frankie tagged along with driver dad “Flamin’ Frank” Pedregon to the racetrack. He earned his nickname by possessing the distinction of igniting the tires on his fuel coupe and keeping them lit all the way down the quarter-mile dragstrip. Oh, it was a sight. No one knew for sure how he did it; maybe he didn’t know, either.

But what young Tony found fascinating was the artistry of it all. A painter today in his precious-little spare time, he discovered early on the gauzy smoke, the golden flames with their tinges of crimson, the blur of boldness against a backdrop of captivating colors, shapes, patterns, and textures. He had an eye for the abstract. He saw the lines, the curves, the angles.

“My childhood memories aren’t of going fishing and camping,” Tony Pedregon said. “They’re of going to races and watching our dad race . . .  and occasionally catch on fire. That was our playground.”

For John Force, the 14-time Funny Car champion who has won more races (127) than any other driver, drag racing was salvation.

Force, easily the sport’s most popular and recognizable ambassador, said he fell in love with fast cars because it eased what he called “the pain of growing up in poverty.” The lure of Parks’ sport was simple, too: “Drag racing was something a kid could do with his mom’s car and a helmet Wally Parks started the concept, and we all went with him.”

Force’s struggle to break into drag racing and to survive in the process is legendary itself: eating boiled eggs and drinking diet cola, living in his car in brother Walker’s driveway, irritating the neighbors with the constant d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d of his engine, holding the car together with what a horrified Walker swore was just baling wire and duct tape, and traveling almost like a hobo to nearly 70 NHRA races before he wound up in the winners circle. And it was all because of what Wally Parks had established and promoted.

In drag racing’s infant stages, we saw racers — that word alone . . . racers . . . exudes exotic, matchless appeal –  each with a swashbuckling dash of audacity. Don “The Snake” Prudhomme was one of the legends. Rake-thin with a cocksure gait, he had the glamour of a Georgio Armani model, with his snarl of dark hair, blue eyes like icy pools of water, and a Machiavellian ruthlessness on the starting line. He oozed “Drop dead” vibes toward his opponents.

But along came Shirley Muldowney, a feisty female from the unsupervised streets of Schenectady, N.Y. She asked nobody’s permission and received almost nobody’s approval when she barged into drag-racing 40 years ago. She single-handedly rocked that male bastion, proving that Top Fuel dragsters run on grit and nitromethane rather than testosterone.

Thanks to her, the NHRA has a record of female participation and diversity that is the envy of NASCAR. While the stock-car posse is still drooling over Danica Patrick, who isn’t even a trailblazer in open-wheel racing by a long shot, drag racing literally has dozens of women drivers, winners, and champions. Women race. Men have adjusted. And the sport has widened its appeal.

Ashley Force Hood, John Force’s daughter, said many of her on-track rivals have known her since she was in diapers and said that women “are welcome in drag racing. Our competitors are happy to have us here.”

Maybe they shouldn’t be. Often the women have outperformed the men.

So drag racing is a crazy sport, a growing and evolving sport, one that speaks so differently to so many individuals. It’s the triumph of technology and the heart of humanity, wrapped into one

“Reaction Time” will bring you the inside look at this sensory-overload subculture as the season unfolds. Please peek in on it at GoRacingTV.com!