Drissel gets high while Stotz resets track record for Street Bikes

Words by Jeff Burk - Photos by Michelle Simmons and Michael Fischbeck

Almost from the beginning of motorsports a racecar of any type leaving the line with the front wheels dangling in the air and the rear bumper scraping the starting line has symbolized power and captured the imagination of the fans and racers. Few things get a crowd into a race like big wheelstands. A wheelstanding car is so popular with fans that some racers have purpose-built exhibition vehicles (as in a child of five could grab the bumper on some of these machines and lift the front wheels off of the ground) with body styles running the gamut from Volkswagen pickups to big yellow school buses to stage coaches and military tanks.

The drag racing fans love them, but those wheelstanders have always been exhibition acts but not serious racing. So it was a bit unusual -- but not out of character -- when almost two decades ago Ron Leek, owner/operator of Byron Dragway in Byron, Ill., and a master showman, decided that instead of just booking in some exhibition cars he would put on a real “race” where local racers could actually compete. Racers who had real race cars that did big wheelstands every time they left the line would be encouraged and indeed paid to see which cars could do the longest or highest or most violent wheelstands. Leek called the event the World Power Wheel Standing Championships.

That first event in 1992 paid one winner $1,000 and some racers tore up some nice cars trying to win that money. This year the race paid winners in five classes with J.D. Drissel from Kenosha, Wisc., the $10,000 grand prize for the highest wheelstand.

From just a half-dozen entries in 1992 the race has grown to the point that almost two dozen entries showed up for the 2011 Championship. It is worth mentioning that although some of the cars were built to do big wheelstands, virtually none of them were purpose-built for this event. In most cases the racers either took the wheelie bars off or tied them to the bumpers of the car they raced weekly.