This Cobalt is from Brazil.

Words and photos by Jeff Burk

For years hard-core drag racing fans have argued that the essence of drag racing were the short wheelbase nitro-burning fuel altereds. They would tell you that real drivers in drag racing were the ones that could figure out how to manhandle a 90-inch wheelbase car capable of a six-second, 200-mph pass down a quarter mile. Real tuners could make clutch and power adjustments to get the power to the ground.

A long time ago the NHRA dropped that class from competition and relegated those cars to exhibition status.

So, as a drag fan where can you go to watch 2000-hp, evil-handling six-second cars racing on the quarter mile? The answer is the World Sport Compact Challenge this weekend at fabled Orlando Speed World in Orlando, Florida.

Forget what you think you know about Sport Compact racing. Forget the aborted effort of a few years back where the cars generally weren't very fast and they broke way more often than they made a full pass. Today's Sport Compact cars are professionally built, professionally crewed and professionally driven bad-fast racecars.

The cars that tested on Thursday (Oct. 27) included 91-inch wheelbase Mopar Starlets with turbocharged rotary engines to the more convention 105-inch wheelbase Mazdas with turbocharged four-cylinder engines to a front-wheel drive Chevy Cobalt with a new GM turbocharged Ecotec engine.

The major change in these cars in recent years is that the engine builders have figured out how to turbocharge the rotary engines and now those engines make a lot of torque as well as horsepower. The lack of torque was always a problem with using the rotary engines. The result is that the extreme short wheelbase Starlets now routinely make quarter-mile passes in six seconds at over 200 mph. And there are other engine body combinations that run just as quick and fast.