Drag Races are Hard

There are those of us who need twists and turns, apexes and elevation changes, downshifts and overtakes. And then there are those who just want to get off the line quicker than the person next to them. The Drag Racers.

On YouTube, drag races answer a question quickly. Unless of course, the channel you’re watching rhymes with shmar shmow, in which case it answers it after about 5 full minutes. HA, PAYWALLED CONTENT MAT, WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?

And for the sake of this column, I don’t mean drag racing is hard (although I’m sure it can be), I mean drag races are hard - to film and report on. But done right, they are incredibly fun. Chris Harris wasn’t acting when he was having an absolute whale of a time racing against us on our strip in the “Dog Knob Red” Hellcat Redeye. Also, our whole team are massive car enthusiasts and are just as interested in the result as the audience is, especially when some fierce rivalries are at play. M3 vs RS5. Mustang vs Camaro. Civic vs Corolla. And so on. On those days, I drive the 2 hours to the airfield with ants in my pants.

Truth be told though, we at TH are scared. Big ole’ scaredy cats. A gruff 45-year-old hard-arse American fella that’s been drag racing since his daddy’s daddy first raced a Model T could probably launch a Dodge Demon a hair quicker than us on an unprepped surface. But for the most part, we believe in our abilities to showcase representative results, regardless of how many wheels are driving, and regardless of the transmission being operated. 

That, and our skill levels on the strip are matched enough to remove driver error/variation. The one time we timed a quarter mile (more on why we don’t in a sec) Thomas and I both drove the same GR Corolla with proper measuring equipment and on the very first attempt achieved a quarter mile time within 1/100th of a second of each other. I won’t say who was quicker, but it was me.

That said, releasing a video of a drag race of two cars on an unprepped surface is scary. First, unless it’s an all-wheel-drive EV that’s at full SoC, 99% of the time you will never hit the manufacturer's claimed time. And therefore you suck and should die, according to the YT comments.

So many factors are at play: weather, tires, octane, how many wheels are being driven, how dry is the strip, how full is the tank/SoC, if it has launch control, is it going to poop itself after two attempts. Is it going to feel like the transmission is about to blow up every time you go into second gear (Nissan Z)? Etc.

The ones we film then, are essentially replications of a street race in a safe environment. And as curious as it would be to still know 0-60 and quarter mile times of that, it just isn’t worth the hassle and the hate, even though YOU reading this probably wouldn’t have an issue, as you are smart and good looking and a real prospect to bring home to Mother. But if I had a dollar for the amount of times Thomas has been told that he can’t drive and should be doing a sub 10 in a Demon, well then I don’t know how much money I’d have because I stopped reading those comment sections a long time ago.

And even if that all goes smoothly, you run into other issues. First, its very possible given the nerves and the pressure, to jump the start, or bog the launch. In which case its a full reset of drone, and drivers. And that pressure builds especially if one of the cars is being temperamental, or if tires need to be kept warm. This multiplies when a third car is added, and a fourth. Especially when we use drivers outside of myself, Thomas and Karston (who will also respond to Karson, Carson, Karsen, Carsten and Carlson). 

It’s also not uncommon for us to be featuring a race that has never been done before, which can sometimes lead to unexpected results that cause us to doubt ourselves and everything we’ve ever done in our lives up until that moment. I will never forget watching the old FK8 Civic Type R pulling away from the FL5 generation and channeling Jar-Jar: “Uh oh. This-a gonna make-a lotta people mad.”

Then there are logistical problems. For the most part, logistics and choice of cars is my bag. The task of finding the right cars at the right time for the right race is oddly tough. Between trims/transmissions/geography, this could be a full time job in itself. But assuming that’s all sorted and the cars are correct, even the correct cars come with their own foibles.

We’ve often said that TH depends on the kindness of owners and dealers and PR reps, and that’s true. But it also means that we rely on the honesty and the trust of those same people. Trust that their EV is arriving with a healthy amount of charge. ICE cars have their own way of causing us despair as well. We are frequently told that a car that’s coming out is completely stock, only to find out when it actually arrives, that it isn’t. “Oh yeah it's stock, just a bunch of bolt-ons oh and it's running on E85.” Most cases its just a muffler change but still. Science over. Video not being filmed. Everybody sadface. 

In fact, I won’t name names, but one time we borrowed an Accord 2.0T from a Dealer and before we rolled the cameras we were wondering why it was making so many blow-off sounds. A quick test run against a stock Camry made it look like an M3 in comparison. No video was filmed that day.

Also weather. That Hellcat Durango vs Escalade V race? We attempted that in the pouring rain and managed about 50 feet before almost hydroplaning into each other. Scary. Big thanks to the owners for coming out a completely different day for that to happen again. But that also brings up safety, which in a Corolla is nothing, but in a supercharged F-150 or a Hellcat, on what is essentially a strip of land that hasn’t been manicured since World War II, is actually a thing.

Also, cars can act differently over time. We have a video on the channel of a Morizo GR Corolla racing a Civic Type R. The final video is representative, but until that final race, the GR in every single race before it was massively losing. And then it felt like the car simply ‘turned on’ the rest of its power, about 25% more. Scary. We were about to wrap filming and call it a day, which would have meant putting out a completely different result. I also recall the Mazda 3 AWD Turbo being horrendously inconsistent, producing a wildly different result every race we did with it.

Then there are production woes. We’ve had days where the microphone receiver has decided to conk out in the bag, and there’s no audio from either myself or Thomas for the entire video, which means a re-do. We’ve had it where the Go Pro on the finish line has been in the wrong setting, and has produced the image of what might a well be a hippogriff in flight at 5FPS. Re-do. Or worse, we don’t realize it until the editing process starts.

On top of all that is the expense. Cost of the track/strip: thousands. The insurance: thousands. Tire replacements: thousands. Fuel for the day: Hundreds. Sharing Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Chicken wings from the local fishing town with all the lovely owners that have come out to help us: Priceless.

So, for a drag race video to go right, we need:

The weather to hold.

The tires to not be bald.

The cars to be stock.

The cars to be consistent.

To have everything go safely.

The launches to be smooth.

State of charge to be equal if EVs.

The cameras to work.

The microphones to stay on.

The drone to stay on.

The results to be fairly consistent with what we expect.

The chicken wings to not be reacting with our stomach.

The octane to be correct.

To smile, and realize it’s for fun.

In fact, so much can go wrong that I’ve developed the superstitious behaviour of shouting ‘GOOD MORNING” to the statue at the beginning of the town near where we film or else a curse will be beset on us this day.

Just wanted to put this down on paper so that the next time you read a comment that says “drag races are easy cash grabs,” just know that a Kia EV6 single car video is easier 500% of the time and can often produce similar views. We aren’t going to stop battling anytime soon, but yeah, drag races are hard.