At 270, It’s a Fast Drive, but a Drive, Nevertheless

Drag racers travel faster--up to 270 m.p.h.--than almost any other form of organized competition that isn’t meant to be airborne, and they do it in less than six seconds in a quarter-mile spurt.

Kenny Bernstein, the reigning NHRA funny car champion, tells what it’s like:

“Many people think you just point those cars and guide ‘em. You drive the car. If it’s going to the right and you don’t turn the wheel, it’s gonna keep going to the right. You really are driving in what I call a loose condition. You’re right on the verge of out of control but in total control.

“How I know the car is running good is the way the car leaves the starting line, if it really pushes you back in the seat. I really know how good it did by Monday morning because I’m real sore.

“When I first get strapped in, sometimes I’m a little nervous, sometimes not. The normal first-round day, I’m probably a little jittery. The minute the car starts, all that goes away.

“The car starts and I run it through the water (poured by a crewman) and spin the tires and heat ‘em up and back up, and all this time I’m watching certain things that Dale’s (crew chief Dale Armstrong) had me check on. We try to do the procedure exactly the same every time. “Your burnout, your wet burnout, the time it takes you to back up, gaining heat in the engine, being lined up correctly on the race track where Dale puts me--all those things are talked about and predetermined. I try to block everything else out.

“Once I go up for the final staging process, I try to go into a deeper mode of concentration. I can’t let any outside thoughts whatsoever get into my mind. It’s not easy to do sometimes.

“What you’re looking for is any sign of yellow (light). By the time you (react), you’re going to be going (on the green). So when you see that yellow light come on--not the green, the yellow--you push the throttle down as hard as you can as quick as you can. Then you drive the race car.

“It takes 5.4 or 5.5 seconds to go from there to the end of the quarter mile. That whole period of time, it’s almost like slow motion in the car. Everything inside slows down, even though the car is going from zero to a hundred in one second, from zero to 270 in 5 1/2 seconds. I can relate to a lot of things that go on in the car . . . the way the car feels and sounds. Any driver can.

“When I reach up to pull the parachute I’m off the throttle at the same time. When the parachute opens and it starts to settle down and I know I’m under control, it’s really a very comforting feeling. It’s very quiet and eerie right then. All you hear is the sound of the wind and the motor kind of crackling from heat--not from running because it shuts off from the force of shutting off the throttle.”