Draggin’ in the Motor City

I’ll never forget my first drag race. It was the summer of 2004 and school had already been out for a month or so. I had just finished sixth grade, and I found myself reading anything and everything car-related I could possibly find. Stacks of Hot Rod, Car Craft and Rodder’s Journal started flooding the mailbox piling up inside our home in the Detroit suburbs. I spent hours on Byron’s Gasser Madness, enduring the painfully slow loading time on our dial-up Internet, only to print out overly pixelated pictures of high riding Willys, Austins and Anglias. Plastic model kits, notebook doodles, long (enjoyable) days at local car shows—the signs were all there. I was obsessed.

Going to the drags was my dad’s idea. As far as I know, he had never been to a race, but he told me stories of hearing the action at Richmond Dragway run late into the night when he was a kid on the Ukrop farm in Virginia during the ’60s and early-’70s. Speed. Power. Loud noises. What’s not to like—especially as a 12-year-old? And so my dad found the dates of the “Night of Fire” at Michigan’s Milan Dragway. It was a full-fledged NHRA event with Top Fuelers, Funny Cars, Pro Stockers, a jet truck and even a wheelstander that looked like a school bus.

Earlier that summer, I had been laid up with a knee injury that put me on crutches for months. As some of you may know, moving around on those things can be pretty cumbersome. I was nervous that when I got there, I wouldn’t be able to shuffle around fast enough to catch the action. But as we rolled through the gate, that was about the last thing on my mind.

The air was warm and we managed to find our way into a spot in the bleachers midway down the track. When the sun began to set, they started running eliminations. Blown Hemis fired to life, spitting flames in the air taller than me. What I remember most, however, was the way the ground shook when two of those long, skinny Top Fuelers streaked by on their way to a 320+mph pass. It was, and always will be, mechanized mayhem.

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So what’d all that have to do with today’s post? Maybe it’s because it’s summertime, or maybe it’s because that knee has been giving me some grief this week. Perhaps a little bit of both? Regardless, here’s some tire-smoking quarter-mile action from Detroit’s famed Motor City Dragway from our sport’s golden age. Enjoy!

—Joey Ukrop

 Video by Bleveric … I’d recommend dialing down the volume if you’re not a big Beach Boys fan. Lead photo from Water Winter Wonderland.