Drag Racing: No time to think

What goes through a drag racing driver’s mind while he or she’s rocketing to 300 mph in a mere 1,000 feet?

A lot, it turns out. While it looks simple enough -- steer the car straight and step on the gas pedal -- actually driving an NHRA top-fuel dragster or funny car is anything but.

In the four seconds or so it takes for the car to launch from a standing start to reach top speed, traversing the length of a football field in a second, its driver must instantly manage the fuel flow, handle a car that starts a race with its front wheels airborne, withstand pulverizing G-forces and release its parachute at the finish line, a demanding journey that takes less time than reading this sentence.

They’re among the most crucial four seconds in sports, and all the information drag racers must process calls to mind other athletes who must make split-second decisions, such as NFL quarterbacks in the pocket and batters facing 95-mph major league fastballs.

But the others are not sitting in a dragster with a deafening roar and generating 8,000 horsepower -- 30 times more power than the average family sedan -- that slams drivers with five Gs the moment they step on the throttle. Now try steering the car while looking down the track. The intensity of these machines is such that two-time top-fuel champion Larry Dixon once likened it to “sitting on a paint shaker trying to read an eye chart.”

Dixon and his fellow drivers will do it again this weekend as the National Hot Rod Assn.’s Full Throttle Series opens its season with the 50th running of the Winternationals, from Thursday through Sunday at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona.

To better understand the challenge of drag racing, Robert Hight, who will defend his crown as last year’s funny car champion, explained at length what he does in the moments before the green light and during the frantic four-second race.

The burnout

A dragster’s giant rear tires must be warmed up to be effective, so drivers first do a “burnout” -- spinning the tires while traveling over a short distance -- at the starting line.

“You first roll through water so the tires get wet,” said Hight, 40, who drives for John Force Racing, the Yorba Linda-based team led by 14-time funny car champion John Force. “Somebody is watching from behind and once the tire makes one revolution in the water . . . the guy in front of me motions to me to hit the throttle and do the burnout.”

Serious and single-minded about his racing, Hight wants his actions consistent in every race, much as a PGA Tour golfer strives for a repeating swing that stays effective under pressure.

So, “I try to stop right at the 330-foot cone [on the drag strip] each time” with his burnout, he said.

Hight ignores the crowd lining each side of the drag strip, and owing to the car’s enveloped cockpit, he can’t see the driver he’s racing against unless that driver is well ahead of him.

What does his car sound like at this point? “Inside it’s not as loud because the [engine’s] headers are pointing out and away,” he said. “It’s loud, don’t get me wrong. But it’s nothing like being on the outside” and hearing the engine. “You also have a helmet on, so it’s muffled.”

He can make his burnouts exactly 330 feet because there is a two-inch piece of metal attached to the throttle cable atop his supercharged engine that prevents the engine from reaching full power even with Hight’s foot smashing the gas pedal to the floor.

(“Gas” actually is a misnomer in the case of top-fuel and funny cars because their fuel isn’t gasoline, it’s nitromethane.)

The burnout generates plumes of smoke from his spinning tires, and now Hight’s funny car rolls back to behind the starting line. His crew lifts the car’s fiberglass body to remove the “throttle stop” from his engine and make last-second adjustments. Then they lower the body.

The starting line

As he inches toward the starting line, Hight said, “I’m constantly doing things in the car. I check the oil pressure 100 times. I’m always fiddling with the fuel.”

That is, he’s adjusting how much fuel is reaching the engine via a lever he tweaks with his left hand, “so I know I’ve got it in the exact spot I want.” Too much fuel and the engine could be too cold for maximum power, too little and the engine could get too hot.

More important, “I’m trying to get the car [positioned] straight . . . because you can have the steering wheel straight but be pointing slightly to the right or left,” Hight said.

The acceleration is so intense at the start that “the first 100 feet the front tires are mostly in the air, so you don’t have any steering ability,” he said.

Now he edges toward the starting line until his front tires cross an infrared beam that triggers up the “pre-stage light,” the top row of yellow lights on the so-called electronic “Christmas tree” set of lights that start the race.

At this point, Hight’s left foot is “buried on the clutch pedal,” his right foot is resting on the gas pedal, his left hand is on the fuel lever and right hand is holding a brake handle.

He next turns the fuel level to “full,” moves that left hand to the steering wheel, takes his left foot off the clutch, holds the brake even tighter -- because with his foot off the clutch the car is now struggling to go forward -- and inches toward the spot that triggers the second row of yellow lights on the Christmas tree, the “staging lights.”

The race

Once both drivers are staged, or lined up evenly, they wait for the final three rows of yellow lights to flash, which are followed in 0.4 of a second by the green lights. But, “you don’t ever look at green” to go, Hight said, because by then he’d be behind the other racer. “When I see that thing flash yellow -- bam -- you react.”

React how? In one coordinated movement, Hight releases the hand brake, shifts that right hand to the steering wheel and simultaneously floors the gas pedal.

The G-forces then slam into the driver, a feeling that legendary drag racer Don Garlits said is “like an elephant putting his foot on your chest.”

Hight said “the acceleration rush is unbelievable. But when you’re making the run, everything is happening so fast and you’re having to react, so there’s no time to think, ‘Wow, this is cool.’ ”

Can Hight tell how fast he’s going? “You can tell good runs and bad runs from how smooth it is, how the engine sounds,” he said. “It’s the coolest sound in the world when that engine is just high RPMs, singing, happy.”

From the moment he hits the gas, Hight said he focuses on the end of the track.

“Your eyes tell you everything, they tell your brain what to process,” he said. “So if your eyes are too close to the race car, you can’t even begin to keep up because things are going so fast. It’s a blur.”

Does he worry about how the other driver is faring? “I try never to do that,” Hight said. “I can’t control what his car is going to do.”

Then there are times things can go dangerously wrong.

At a race in Topeka, Kan., in 2007, Hight’s engine blew up as he crossed the finish line in the left lane, engulfing his car in flames. With Hight blinded by burning oil on his windshield, his car first crossed lanes and slammed into the right wall, then ricocheted back and hit the left wall.

As the crashes slowed his car, Hight escaped serious burns by ripping off his seat belts and lifting the upper half of his body through a safety opening in the roof. He also planted one foot on the brake handle to slow the car further, and finally jumped out while the car was still traveling 30 mph.

“Reacting to something when it’s not a perfect run” is the toughest thing to learn as a drag racer, he said. “You get the least amount of time to practice things like that, hopefully.”

The finish

There are foam blocks that mark the finish line and “in a perfect run everything is crystal clear and you see those blocks coming up and you lift [off the throttle] right on time,” Hight said.

Simultaneously, he reaches for a handle just to the right of his head that deploys his two parachutes. As air fills the chutes “now it’s like a negative four Gs,” he said.

“It slams you forward you and can feel the belts digging into your chest,” Hight said. “The first time I ever hit the chutes, I thought the rear end had fallen off the car.”

There are lights next to each lane and the winner’s instantly lights up. “If you don’t see one light up on your side, you didn’t win,” he said.

Win or lose, as the chutes blossom and Hight takes his foot off the gas, he also starts pulling the brake handle “so if the chutes don’t come out I’ve got a head start on that brake.” He also shuts off the fuel in case of fire.

“It’s really fast how all this happens,” he said.

james.peltz@latimes.com