Friday DH and I went up to
Gainesville Raceway for the
2009 NHRA Gatornationals. We left Port Orange around 8am, took I-95 to Bunnell and after 2 wrong turns and just over 2 hours, we were there. The day was perfect - perfect weather, not too big of a crowd, great day of racing. We had never been to a professional drag racing event, but we came prepared and I'm so glad we did! They generate 120 dB of noise (I've even seen 1 report say 170 dB) enough to cause some peoples' eardrums physical pain, and equivalent to a Boeing 747 jet airliner at take-off power. Here we are with our earmuffs :)
A Top Fuel dragster accelerates from 0 to 100 mph (160 km/h) in as little as .8 seconds. The cars can reach up to 325 mph in a quarter mile. And that's just Top Fuel dragsters. We also saw funny car, pro-stock, motorcycles, pro-mod, top alcohol dragster and funnycar and a few others. Here's top fuel dragsters Antron Brown (blue) and Brandon Bernstein (red). Antron was leading the points on Friday when we were there.
And no drag racing event is complete without funny man (and funny car driver/owner) John Force. First, John racing next to Tony Pedregon (Quaker State). And after is John hanging out watching his other cars race (red and gold firesuit and black hat). One of his daughters, Ashley Force Hood, also races in the NHRA.
We mostly stayed in the stands for the races but checked out the pit area afterward. We saw Antron Brown and Doug Kalitta hanging out near their pits. Here's Doug's top fuel dragster getting loaded into the truck.
After a long day at the track, we headed over to our room at the Sleep Inn and were happily surprised with a jet tub in our room. We ordered pizza from
Pizza Vito and stayed in. The pizza was just ok, their garlic knots were delish though! Next time, if we've got more energy, we've got to try a highly recommended place
Satchels Pizza.
For more photos of our day in Gainesville, check out my
flickr site
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