A real, old-fashioned drag race

The NMCA World Street Finals/ GM Performance Parts LSX Shootout isn’t billed as a nostalgia race where the race cars generally are required to be built by Detroit prior to a certain year, but in many ways this race is nostalgic in that it resembles an NHRA/IHRA national event from the 1960’s when a gearhead could actually buy a high-performance car from  a Chrysler/Ford/Chevy dealership, take it to their local dragstrip, and compete in the highest levels of doorslammer racing.

At the Oct. 7-10 NMCA race at Gateway International Raceway there were 600 race cars on the premises and 200 of those had GM’s LSX engines for power. There were plenty of pre-1995 cars but there were also plenty of 2000 and newer race cars. So it was a drag race dominated in part by younger racers driving and tuning fast Detroit iron with basic engine combinations that could have been an option when the car was ordered from the dealer. That is surely the way it once was and that is the definition of nostalgia.

But that wasn’t all. There was a midway full of manufacturers booths selling the latest speed parts to racers. Racers who might actually take the part right over to their cars in the pits and install it. Anyone who attends an NHRA/IHRA/ADRL race these days simply isn’t gong to see that kind of racing or atmosphere but that wasn’t the case at the World Street Finals.

If you are just a fan of bad-fast Pro Stock and Pro Mod type cars with 800+ cubic inch engines with carbs and nitrous or fuel injection and superchargers that make the quarter mile in six seconds at 200 mph, those cars were in abundance too.