Booking it Down the Track

I've followed a few drag racers to my social media feeds in the last month or two, just for something a little different. I don't know a lot about the sport aside from the premise: build a combination of car and driver that will get from one end of the track to the other as quickly as possible.

We have a drag strip within 30 minutes of my house, but I think I've only been to one event there. It was a long time ago, probably in middle school. I used to drive by plenty of times on my way to and from my hometown, though, so I would see fragments of runs or cars lined up waiting to race. I'd like to get out and see an event, but it's sometimes hard to justify the money and time to go. It would be weird to go alone, but I don't think my kids would be able to stick it out for more than a little while. They had a good time at Monster Jam last weekend, but even by the end of that the two youngest kids were asking if we could go home. I don't know if a few hours at the track would hold their interest.

There is a cardboard angle to all this drag racing talk, of course, given the nature of this blog. Panini's 2016 National Treasures NASCAR Racing product featured a few autographs from outside of NASCAR, including some NHRA drag racing signatures. I believe most/all of the NHRA autographs came from the John Force Racing team, including this booklet I picked up, featuring the signatures of John Force's drag racing daughters, Brittany and Courtney Force. Brittany drives a Top Fuel dragster, while Courtney drives a Funny Car. Part of the draw of racing is the sponsors, and Monster and Traxxas are two companies I happen to like quite a bit. I've looked at getting die-cast cars for both drivers, but haven't ever pulled the trigger on that.

This booklet is the Gold parallel, numbered # 04 / 49. The base version has a print run of 99 copies, and there are a couple of parallels with smaller print runs.

This weekend apparently marked the start of the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season, with the Circle K Winternationals in Pomona, California. Brittany made it out of the first (of four) round, but lost in the second round. Courtney beat her dad and made it to the finals, but lost in the final to Matt Hagan. I'll probably try to track the race results throughout the season, but I don't know how much I will post about it on my blog. I've got a few other drag racing cards coming in at some point, but I haven't decided how crazy I'm going to go with this stuff. It looks like the main options that are readily available are the handful of 2016 National Treasures cards, some Upper Deck Goodwin Champions stuff, and die-cast.