Tag Archives: Motorsport

Drag Racing

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I have had the chance to photograph a variety of motorsports over the years but I recently got a chance to try something new.  I went to see some drag racing at Pacific Raceways in Kent, south of where we live.  I have seen drag racing on TV in the past but have not ever been in person.  I was covering this for Speed and Sport Journal, a website run by my friend Joel in Chicago.  I won’t rewrite the piece I put together for him but will, instead, include the link here to that work.

https://www.speedandsportjournal.com/flav-r-pac-nhra-northwest-nationals/

The focus on that article was not on the results and individual performances but instead what the experience was like going to my first drag racing.  It was a very intense thing to be so close to.  Incredibly loud and physically imposing stuff and quite unlike anything I had done before and that includes standing beside fast jets as they take off.  Joel used a number of my images for the article so here I shall include some that didn’t make it in but that I liked for whatever reasons my brain may have.

A Sequence of Pain and Damage

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Motorsports are dramatic enough when things are going normally but there is also the scope for more drama if things end up going awry.  I saw a few of the riders end up on their sides as they came in to a sharp left hander with too much speed but these were normally relatively benign affairs with some bruises and scratched up panels on the bikes.  However, early in the day, I had one more dramatic event.

I was up near Turn 5 when I heard something going wrong.  I had the camera up already and the bike and rider came into the viewfinder without me really controlling things.  I did then manage to track them as they headed off into the grass separately and at some speed.  The bike cartwheeled around while the rider slid and rolled.  He did not spring back to his feet and it took a while for the marshals to get to him and to help him up.

He walked gingerly to the marshal station to await someone coming to pick him up later.  While he seemed basically intact, he certainly didn’t seem well after the incident.  I didn’t hear about his condition so I hope he was okay after a bit of time to recover.