Thursday, May 21, 2009

Burnouts, Speed and Ingenuity

Speed Channel's PASSTIME show taped 10 episodes over two days at the Zmax Dragway in Concord, NC. It is a show in which vehicles from Motorcyles, SUV's to Volkswagens are entered. There were 2 celebrity contestants go against the "house" Ken Herring. They have to guess the times of the vehicles based upon the descriptions of work done to these cars. Then the cars power down a 1/4 mile dragstrip.

Celebrity NASCAR drivers and crew chiefs, made up most of the contestants. Some of the most interesting cars included a corn-fed ethanol vehicle to two super motorcycle racers who were fearless going down the track accelerating to over 100+ mph. What you take away from the show is how much different each vehicle was from each other and the appreciation of the amount of time the owners took to develop these as the morphed into racing vehicles.

I had a chance to meet the host of the show Brett Wagner and speak to the producer, Ray Eddings. These episodes are expected to air starting on Speed channel in July.