One of the most interesting things to consider, especially in the current state of popularity for what the global state of street legal and endurance drag racing looks like, is the fact that the seed took so long to germinate. Consider the fact that long before WWII hot rodders in the western US would take long trips in their cars to get to the dry lakes and beat the stuffing out of them all day and then turn around and drive them home. It’s in the culture and fabric of hot rodding to actually drive the machines we build and then test them to their limits, so why did it take the better part of 70 years to actually start this whole craze?

As all of us go through life we receive advice from our elders. Loads of that advice is good and some of it is suspect. I think we can all agree that there are a handful of people in our lives that have delivered advice either by words or example which have helped to form us into the people that we are and that we eventually became. The more colorful the character the more colorful the advice it seems but at the end of the day, we all need some help along the way and advice, whether solicited or not is normally how we get it.

If there’s been one thing that’s held as a constant in the nearly two decade history of drag-and-drive events, it’s the weirdly positive relationship that competitors have been able to maintain, by and large, with the police. Yes, there have been and will be citations handed out over the course of time, but when we stop and think about what have now been thousands of ragged-edge street cars cruising the highways and byways of America, the number of times that “license, registration, and proof of insurance, please,” have been uttered through a driver’s window by a large officer is exceptionally small.

Sure the title of this column seems to make no sense and have nothing to do with drag racing, but in truth, it has everything to do with it. Whether you are a racer, a fan, or simply a passionate supporter of the sport, all of the things mentioned above have a lot to do with the continued success of the enterprise today and long, long into the future.

Since the very beginning of what we now know as the world of drag-and-drive competition, it has existed as a unique and wholly interesting subset of the sport of drag racing. More than that, it has evolved in ways that are singular in and unto itself.

The world of drag racing has been obsessed with the number 300 since the early 1990s. It was during that time frame when top fuel dragsters began to flirt with 300mph quarter mile runs and it captured the imaginations and attention of gearheads the world over.

A scene that I have referenced previously happened at a hotel in Michigan on a Thursday evening in 2005. This was the night preceding the last day of Drag Week. There was a good group of guys sitting around this table and the conversation was about when the hotel would run out of Corona and the future for an event like Hot Rod Drag Week.

It is only natural to gauge any form of competition, no matter what, on its records. How many home runs has a guy hit in a season, or how many touchdown passes have been thrown? In drag racing, it usually reverts back to the absolute quickest elapsed times for a particular class or category.