Nitrous Refills and Never Enough Grip: The Pursuit of the Drag Racing Dream

It was a familiar scene. The stench of secondhand smoke hung heavy in the unseasonably warm March air trackside as late model Mopars ran passes well short of their advertised capabilities. I was alone, watching the early birds make passes that can only be described as “high school fast.” Finally, my first associate would arrive in an impossibly minty Buick Regal–one of the Things That Should Not Be. We reconnoitered the area to end back up trackside to watch a turbocharged PT Cruiser outrun an Ecoboost Mustang–another pair of Things That Should Not Be. Unimpressed, we wandered back down to the pits to patiently await the arrival of our contact, a man and his father in a just-loud-enough cateye Silverado pulling a perfectly ugly S-10 pickup.

In the setting 7 P.M. sun we soon recognized the unmistakable burble of a straight-piped Vortec under load, and we knew we were in the right place. Our contact parked his trailer, and we were in business. The world’s loudest S-10 thundered to life and backed off the trailer as we set off to an empty fuel shack to inquire about some high-octane from a man who looked exactly who you would imagine sells 108 out of a jerry can. Cash changed hands before the newly invigorated race truck rolled back to our makeshift pit as my contact and his father prepared the trucklet to go faster than any thirty-year-old GM product has any right to. A poke here, a prod there, opening and closing the throttle like an excited child with his first 2-stroke. All perfectly loud, and all perfectly necessary.

Soon the heroes of the night would take off in the S-10 to the staging lanes, as us mere mortals began our bipedal trek towards the starting line. There, we would wait behind all manner of vehicles, from single-cylinder junior dragsters to lifted pickup trucks staging ahead of us. If you’ve never experienced it, there’s a bit of a comforting cadence to the whole thing–shoot the bull for a minute while you can, unsuccessfully attempt to speak over the burnout, give up on conversation to watch the launch, before lighting up the truck like a rifle shot to idle to the next place in line. Rinse and repeat until the line gives way and our pre-staging purpose becomes tangible again. Now there’s a couple of schools of thought to a proper burnout, the first being a quick hit to the tires to clear the grip surface and get the compound just soft enough to make up for the distinct lack of tread. The second, however, is its own experience. A cacophony of screaming tires, a singing exhaust, and the distinct smell of rubber and concrete quickly becoming one, as the smoke show extends 1/32nd of a mile, surely to the displeasure of the track workers, but pure delight to us spectacle junkies behind the concrete barrier. Like only a true hero, my contact subscribes to the latter theory.

Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter as the tires barked upon a green light, leaving us a puff of tire smoke and a delayed suspension load reaction like a hungover sprinter still reeling from the starter’s shot. The big end of the track wouldn’t be much better, the LS-powered mini-truck gasping for air into high gear across the final timing beam. Rolling back to our personal high-octane hangout, a flutter of frustrations, reasonings, and pleadings were abound.

“Lean.”

“No, rich.”

“Only in high gear.”

“Only under high load.”

“We got screwed on the bottle fill.”

A brief nitrous purge would reveal that my contact did, indeed, get screwed on the nitrous fill, with a cool spritz more akin to keyboard duster than the frosty plume of a 150 shot.

“Run it without the button.”

“Not good enough.”

“One of you go ask if they’re selling tonight.”

So, like a junkie desperate for his next fix, I inquired to the man who looks exactly like someone who sells 108 octane out of a jerry can about some nitrous.

An empty bottle was hurriedly shuttled over in a last ditch effort to make speed happen, at the low, low price of $10 per pound. Suddenly our previously empty cup runneth over, as the fresh bottle fill was rushed back to a warmer, the potential for speed now at an all-time high. Our excitement may have been palpable, but the one man who mattered was cool, unfazed, unaffected by buzz of us electrified onlookers who were over the moon about being included in the grand display of the track that night. By virtue of my contact, I was part of the “in crowd” that night, one of “Those Who Know.” Newly initiated as a participant in the grand dance that night, I followed our newly nitrous-purged ugly truckling back into the staging lanes, with a renewed sense of purpose, of speed.

The boisterous little S-10 renewed the cadence of coordinated chaos through the peanut gallery of the staging lanes once again. And then: tire smoke. Staging lights. A high compression LS motor up against the converter. The moment was impeccable. Tires barked hard, too hard, as the launch went up in smoke for the second time that night. A healthy motor at the big end of the track proved that we indeed did not get screwed on the nitrous fill this time from the man in the shack. Regardless, we were repaid for our efforts with an E/T half a second slower than the truck’s proven capabilities.

What happened next is what made this all worth writing about. The return trip of our hero from the lanes back to our improvised rendezvous point was most certainly one of his own disappointment, underperforming timeslip in hand. But it didn’t matter. A quick inspection of the truck would reveal a wet frame as the result of a blown transmission seal. But that didn’t matter either. What did matter is that in that moment, we were living the middle-American drag racing dream. Chasing E/Ts was more the goal than the timeslip itself. Regardless of the results of the night, we talked and laughed and joked as if we had just won the NHRA Spring Nationals. No worries about times, nitrous, or transmissions, only good company to make up for the short night of racing.

Just living the dream.