Aided by longtime sponsor Flowmaster Mufflers and its new marketing partner, the National Guard, the American Drag Racing League shattered performance and attendance records with the Drag Illustrated Magazine Dragpalooza IV event at the Angel Family’s Houston Raceway Park in Baytown, Texas. The largest crowd ever to pack an ADRL venue (Ed Note 12,080 attended Friday and 41,742 on Saturday because of lack of parking the track stopped letting cars in a 5:00 PM Saturday!) witnessed the fastest eighth-mile speed ever recorded by a passenger car, the quickest eighth-mile elapsed time ever produced by a naturally-aspirated engine and no less than seventy-five teams sporting the newest equipment and livery in the continuation of the association’s 2008 tour.
Conducted in astonishing atmospheric conditions which presented a corrected elevation far below sea level during the entire race, correct negotiation of the HRP surface demanded equal amounts of conservatism and tact. While greed played the largest role in the number of aborted runs, the most successful teams actually detuned for the miraculous conditions in an attempt to find consistency rather than new National Records. Surprising efforts were posted by several unheralded drivers who survived far longer than the top point earners from the first ADRL event of 2008, completed in October of 2007 at the Texas Motorplex in Dallas. In fact, of thirty-two drivers ranked in the top eight positions for the Battle For the Belts Championship in the ADRL’s four professional divisions, only thirteen advanced past the first round at Houston.
The entire Dragpalooza IV program was completed in ten and half hours; high winds and low temperatures cancelled the first day’s test session and single qualifying round. In conjunction with the HRP crew, ADRL Racemaster Bubba Corzine still presented two qualifying periods and four rounds of eliminations for the four premiere categories while finishing only six minutes from his scheduled 10:15 PM completion. The largest logistics concern was actually in traffic management; local police officers maintained a steady flow for arriving fans who endured an eight-mile jam to enter the facility and, with spectators still arriving at 9 PM, (Ed Note to support the attendance claims the director of concessions at HRP told DRO that they had the largest single day gross sales in the track’s history on Saturday) many fans simply parked at roadside and walked to the track!