Drag Illustrated Issue 119, March 2017 | Page 8

LETTER from the EDITOR T wenty-five years ago, Kenny Bernstein topped what many believe to be drag racing’s last major perfor- mance barrier with his 4.823-second, 301.70-mph blast down Gainesville Raceway’s fabled quarter-mile during the 23 rd an- nual NHRA Gatornationals. The first driver to run faster than 300 mph, Bernstein was reborn in the spring of 1992 as the “King of Speed” and despite winning six NHRA world championships over the course of his Hall of Fame career, will forever be known for a little under five seconds in Florida. Drag racing and performance milestones have always gone hand-in-hand, but our seemingly ever- increasing fascination with record setting has, at least in my humble opinion, gotten completely out of hand. While I don’t want to downplay the histori- cal significance of Bernstein’s aforementioned feat, or the innumerable barrier-breaking efforts on the strip that came before and after, the fact remains that most every hardcore drag racing fan can iden- tify the date, place, time, lane and barometric pres- sure (I’m being dramatic) when Bernstein eclipsed the triple-century mark, yet few could identify the Top Fuel winner of the ‘92 Gatornationals (Eddie Hill took out Bernstein in the final). And that is (again, in my opinion), reasonable cause for alarm. But I get it. I do. In drag racing, winning is some- thing that you do very little of, even if you’re a world champion-level racer. There has to be other ways to validate one’s efforts on the drag strip, to make all the time, money and energy spent worthwhile—and few things do so as much as a label like “First in the Fives” might for Pro Mod racer Mitch Stott or “First to 200 mph in the Quarter-Mile” for Outlaw 10.5 pioneer Steve Kirk. For many racers, admittedly, it’s racing against oneself, pushing the performance envelope, po- tentially etching their names in history that drives them, and there’s no shame in that. I vividly remem- ber in the late 1990s legendary track announcer Ron Leek inaccurately identifying my dad’s 1989 Pontiac Firebird as the quickest-and-fastest, small- block-powered doorslammer on the planet and the way my ol’ man perked up when he heard it over the PA system. Leek was notorious for getting a little overzealous with his salesmanship and, again, it was likely nowhere close to being true (with an all-aluminum 434ci and a Lenco 5-speed, the car really did run quite well), but even after all these years it serves as a strong reminder of what a title or label like that can mean to a person. We in the drag racing media, honestly, we love it, too. Big numbers and record-breaking perfor- mances make great headlines, excellent keepsakes when featured in magazines, and garner a lot of web traffic. Never mind the driver and crew chief; it’s also huge for the car, engine and parts manu- facturers involved. Being the first, or the quickest, or the fastest, even among a very specific group, is a big deal—I get it. It’s my belief, though, that world records should be like an extra layer of icing on the already delec- Wesley R. Buck Editor-in-Chief 8 | Drag I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com Wesley R. Buck Editor-in-Chief wes@dragillustrated.com Scott Dorman Publisher 615.478.5275 scott@dragillustrated.com Will Mandell Senior Sales Executive 615.426.0465 will@dragillustrated.com JT Hudson Sales Representative 660.341.0063 jt@dragillustrated.com Mike Carpenter Design & Production Director 704.737.2299 mike@dragillustrated.com Ian Tocher Senior Editor 404.375.4895 ian@dragillustrated.com Van Abernethy Senior Staff Writer & Field Subscription Sales 828.302.0356 van@dragillustrated.com table cake that is competitive drag racing. I hate seeing entire events judged on whether or not a record was set there. Throughout 2016 and into this first portion of the 2017 racing season, though, I feel like the racing community, for the most part, has become so focused on who is going to blow down the scoreboard, that we’ve lost sight of what I believe is still the crowning achievement in drag racing: blowing the doors off the competition! Don’t get me wrong, when the stars and moon align and conditions are right and everyone on the property knows a world record could come at any moment, it’s super exciting. I’ve been on hand for a number of occasions like this and the electricity is palpable—and I don’t want that to change. In fact, I’m not suggesting it