Oh, hey Hot Rod magazine, nice to meet you…

Sep 25

***Phone rings

-Ernesto Araiza here, who’s speaking?

-Hey Ernesto, this is Hot Rod Magazine, we heard cool things from you and we need help covering our event, Drag Week, are you available?

- Let me check, It’s the same weekend of the B400 so that means that I am, in fact, available…

-Cool see you in Chicago.

“This event gives you the bragging rights to say that you have the fastest legal car in the world.” - Kevin Diossi, Senior photographer at Hot Rod and now good friend of mine explaining the event to me in very easy terms.

The deal works like this, every team must compete in all 5 tracks while also driving the racecar from racetrack to racetrack, for 5 days straight; like a rally-esque event but the only time that counts it’s on the ¼mile dragstrip.

No external help. Only 2 people per team, a driver and a mechanic. Teams are allow to help between each other, but that’s it. Also, to give proof that you in fact, drove from track to track, you need to follow a specific route, with checkpoints along the way where you must take a photo that shows your car with an specific background, most of the time featuring Route66 unique gems.

Drag racing is something I’m not that familiar with, in my town there’s 1/8-mile drag racing but is not as popular as desert racing, plus the last time I was involved in one was around 2014 so it’s fair to say that it felt like a new world.

A world full of beautiful machines made of dreams and love for racing. Old machines, new machines, some with a little bit of both… In this world, the Hot Rod world, the community feels like a car conservation society that also tries very hard to melt the engine for 10 seconds, some of them only need 5.

I’ll dream with those Pontiac Trans Am, that red 80’s camaro with tusks for exhausts that left my ears with a constant tingling as im writing this almost a week later.

And that Viper, geez… I haven’t ever seen a Viper so comfortable doing what it does best: to be fast on racetrack and sketchy on the highway, with 4000HP nonetheless.

So many colors, brands, textures, lines, styles, details, heritage, moments, instants…

What is it? that feeling of man-machine that makes us do silly things? I mean, people pay to do it, to risk it all, it doesnt matter if it’s 1/4 of a mile or 1000 miles…. that necessity of men for living on the edge *of their choice*.
Meanwhile, how close can I get? And how can I ride one, I kept thinking…

This Camaro on the photo below… loudest beast I have ever photograph since that Yellow Corvette at IMSA Petite LeMans back in 2017ish

But then again, racing was half the homework, the other half was to drive and survive a 1000-mile highway long circuit. Heat waves, and rainy days and the humidity in between added for extra points.

Most of this racecars don’t have a/c by the way.