Event Coverage Royboy Goes To The 2015 Meltdown Drags

Still working on catching up on my blog. This coverage was all made possible by Speedway Motors advertising on my site for the week that after the Meltdown Drags.





For a couple of years I’ve seeing and hearing photos of this near mythical drag event near Chicago called the Meltdown Drags. So in my quest to hit a bunch of new events in 2015, the plans were made to head to Illinois to find this mythical event. 2015 marked the 6th annual Meltdown Drags held at Byron Dragway outside of Byron, IL just southwest of Rockford.

That’s about 650 miles one way from my place, what the heck, I wanted to go for it. When I got to the track on Saturday morning just looking through the fence at the cars in the pits it was all worth it. This was the greatest collection of vintage drag vehicles that I’d ever seen and I wasn’t even in the gate yet.

After getting in and getting my press pass I caught up with some familiar faces, my friends from Gears and Gals Magazine, John Wells from Vintage Torque Fest, Matt from Gear Drive Headers, just to name a few. All of the cool kids were there. Not long after getting in the facility I got a clue to the name “Meltdown Drags” although admittedly I didn’t get it until later in the day. Looking down the track in the top image you can see the top of the cooling tower of the nearby nuclear facility. More commentary tomorrow, enjoy the photos…































































More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

amazing how calm everyone stayed despite tornado

 

Thank you !! It is only better in person!!

 

it only took me an hour or two to figure out why they called the event "Meltdown Drags" I'm slow.

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

Thanks for posting,Great coverage..

 

The Cooling Tower in the background is interesting ! ! !

VR&C.

 

Ive always wanted to go. Nice images

 

The 2015 Meltdown Drags action started shortly after I arrived. I made my way to the starting line of the Byron Dragway. The air was heavy, the clouds were thick, but the reports were that the Friday temps were much worse than Saturday’s. It didn’t take long for the lanes to fill up and the cars just kept coming and coming until I finally had to take a break.

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

Fantastic pictures. Thanks so much for posting them.

 

Great photos mate! It was my first time there too and I was very impressed as it is probably the best drag event that I have been too in years. Love the shots of my mate Buck in the Rock n Roll Express digger.

Roo

 

Nicely done Travis! It looks like you had a perfect day weather wise to get great shots.

 

As we work through the huge amount of photos from the 2015 Meltdown Drags you’ll see more awesome wheels up drag racing action, a look through the pits and some of the car show on site. The car show basically is a preferred spectator parking area, drive a pre-72 car as a spectator and park in the show car area, great idea!

Drag cars sometimes have some great names, some of my favorites are in this post, what’s your favorite one?


More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

more to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

Fantastic pics Travis, well worth the wait as usual.

 

In part 4 of the 2015 Meltdown Drags coverage we continue with the car show coverage. There was a great selection of cars in the car show parking, the only problem with checking them out was I was missing some racing action! So I had to wait until someone had a mishap on the track to rush over to the car show and capture some images while missing the least amount of racing.


More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

More to come, see you at a show,
Royboy

 

Wow,...this is by far the best coverage I've seen and every photo is excellent.
I was there all weekend but your photos are the next best thing to being there,...great job!

 

Great catch up... well done and thanks for the flattering shots. I always think pictures make my race cars look fat

 

Thank you! That means a lot to me. I always try to get better than your average event coverage. Hope it inspires some folks out there to go next year!

 

This is a trick question. I like your race car just the way it is...

 

Wow, what an event. I love the cloud of reactor vapor in the background. Thanks for shooting the event. How drag racing should be. Great job Travis.

 

Fantastic - Thanks

 

Thank you Great Photos You nailed it Just like being there! Even got my POS 56 Chevy!!! GREAT JOB

 

LOVED these photos. I'm from the East Coast, but i feel like i need to go to Chi Town to see, smell, and hear this for myself! Thank you for posting.