You have to love the description of a fan's first exposure to a Funny Car at the new Lowe's Motorsports Park. A better explanation I have never read. I remember it well.. and like him.. will never forget.. Just had to share this..
"Anticipation and adrenaline combine to create a heady euphoria in the congregation that has assembled to witness this sermon of speed. The sleek, logo-brazen cars, if you could call them that, are really only slight approximations of what we know an automobile to be. These hulking marvels of modern engineering take on a cartoonish quality as they pose under the Carolina blue sky, waiting to tattoo their signatures on Bruton’s virgin concrete forearms.
With laser precision, the velocity monsters align themselves shoulder to shoulder at the speedway's altar, waiting impatiently for the Tree to blink its eyes from amber to green. Like an angry caged animal, they snort, pop, and spit raw fuel over the very crew, who just an hour prior performed successful open-heart surgery on them. The burning stacks of exhaust cry out in anticipation of the coming mayhem, and in the split second before all hell breaks loose, an eerie calm descends over the arena. The cars seem to take one last chest-raising, gonna-kick-your-ass breath before they explode in a violent cacophony of torqued steel and atmosphere-bending heat. The pair jump off the line, and 16,000 ear-shattering horses begin their ritualistic quarter-mile journey.
Then, instantly, seemingly without warning, they are upon you. Like being too close to a lightning strike, you don’t know whether to duck for cover, shit your pants, or scream as if you just saw a ghost, which you do involuntarily as your brain tries to catch up with what just happened. You are rocked to the core with jaw-dropping, heavy-metal-Metallica, double-bass foot-pedal rumble — hell, yeah! You join the fanatic chorus of 30,000 other drag racing disciples, who simultaneously raise their hands and cans in a salute to unbridled horsepower and to life itself. There’s no mistaking it — you are alive — there is no forgetting it — you never will.
In a little over three seconds, the flash of mechanical fury is complete. Nothing left but two chutes dancing through the blurry haze of hot Carolina sun and blistering asphalt. The indoctrination into the church of speed is complete. You’ve been baptized with nitro and smoldering remains of Goodyear rubber. Together they form an intoxicating incense that singes your eyes, burns your throat, but somehow makes you want more."
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