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October 13, 2004 A Day at the RacesWith all due respect to the Marx Brothers, I took the Mustang racing with the Seybold family today and had a great time, weather notwithstanding. Each year, Doug Seybold rents Norwalk Raceway Park, one of the nicest drag-racing facilities around, and invites fellow enthusiasts to join him for some heads-up action. Today, about a dozen cars showed up, ranging from a really nice '32 Ford Roadster highboy with Lincoln Mark VIII power, to Doug's '62 Impala SS convertible with a heavily-breathed-upon 409 and open headers to a pair of replicas: a Cobra and a Healey. And we just lined up and blasted off for a few hours.
I'll be the first to say that I'm not a drag racer. Today was only my second time on a drag strip in my own car. I'm a road racer, which uses an entirely different set of skills. Not harder or easier, just different. For instance, in road racing, the goal is to keep the equipment alive for long races, so you tend to be gentle with your shifting and careful with balancing the car. In drag racing, shifts take critical time, so you have to move fast. In road racing, you launch once and it isn't critical to the outcome of the race. In drag racing, the launch is the most critical aspect of the race, and drivers spend lifetimes trying to perfect their technique. It's tough, make no mistake. My 300-horsepower Mustang barely ran in the 13s because of the incompetent behind the wheel, not because of any shortcomings in the hardware. Nick Seybold probably pulled the fastest time of the day with his '69 Chevelle powered by a small-block and backed by an old Muncie 4-speed. I think I saw him run a 12.0 @ 112 MPH or so, which is pretty darned quick for a street car. That was some nice driving, too.
Then the skies opened up on us and we had to call it a day. That's about par for the course: I washed the Mustang yesterday, so you know it's my fault. Sorry guys! Previous
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