Bakersfield As Barometer

The motor homes across from the pits stretched out side-by-side a quarter-mile long and four rows deep, all the way back to the fence.  On the deeper, wider pit side, there were hundreds of megabuck transporters and motor homes and trailers and a quadrillion dollars’ worth of vintage race cars, hot rods and customs. Orange groves, grape arbors and oil wells surround this hallowed, historic Kern County property, now littered with the entourages of 575 racing teams and those who came to urge them on. Nobody here was crying the blues. Everybody here was having fun. This was Famoso Raceway. This was The March Meet, 2010, and it was spectacular. Recession? What recession?

The March Meet, a professional drag race of one kind or another since 1959, is the second major event held in Southern California each winter, only a few weeks after the NHRA Winternationals at Pomona, and the first vintage drag race of the year.

This is a wholly different kind of drag race, a drag race for people who really want to be there, not because of contracts or TV or sponsor obligations, but because drag racing is America’s family motorsport.  Most of these spectators wouldn’t be caught dead at an NHRA event, because it is too formal, too slick, too regimented, and too expensive. This is drag racing the way it used to be, dirty, loud and fast, to borrow a phrase.

Whatever you call it, Bakersfield, the Smokers race, Famoso, The Patch, or The March Meet, this thing has been a late-winter institution for more than half a century.

Here, the funny car bodies date from the Sixties, even though they look brand new and most of them are. Here, the funny cars are built and painted to look like famous funny cars of old, “tribute” cars for retired or deceased teams deserving of tribute.  Here, the fuel dragsters have their engines out there where they once belonged, in front of the driver, in chassis that are miles shorter than the NHRA rear-engined cars. The Fuel Altered cars that show up for Bakersfield are the same ones that we’ve been seeing at the drags for 40 years, freshened and ready for a new season.

The smart and flush got here on Thursday so they could butt their megabuck motorhomes up against the fence, fire up the satellite dish, fire up the barbecue, break out the table and chairs, and wait for the jousting to begin on Friday.  The rest of us trickled in behind them, some from as far away as Sweden, England and Germany, until the grandstands were absolutely packed. That’s the kind of pull the March Meet has for some of those who inhabit the lunatic fringe.

The March Meet would be a roaring success as a car show and swap meet even if none of the race cars ever spun a tire.  The quality and finish of the vintage race cars, the hot rods, the kustoms and the rat rods (please don’t call us that; we prefer ‘traditional hot rods’) was as good as the machinery we saw the previous weekend at the famous Autorama indoor show in Detroit.  And the cars in the car show were DRIVEN in here, not trailered.

We were reminded of Fahrenheit 451. If you want to talk about the history of drag racing or hotrodding in Southern California while you’re here, you just walk up to someone and ask them about their race car, hot rod, or kustom, and the details will come tumbling out faster than you can absorb them.  Walk up to Art Chrisman and ask him about his dragster’s 50-year history. He won here at the first Bakersfield race in 1959, and he comes back every year with that same car. There are dozens of racers here who have been racing since 1959, many of them now old, wizened, bent or crippled, but still drag racers to their cores, and full of lore and stories.

Grab funny car pros like Gary Densham, Ron Capps, or  Cruz Pedregon, all here racing vintage funny cars, and ask them.  They’re not busy; they’re just here bullshitting with their pals in the relaxed, aromatic pit area.  And their pals include 14-time funny car world champion and 1984 Bakersfield champion John Force, who is here acting as Grand Marshal.  Put a microphone in front of this guy, and he will spew enthusiasm as far as San Diego.  It would be the same if you approached a gasser guy, an altered addict, or a doorslammer denizen.  They are all here because they love this.

The 52nd edition of the Bakersfield race was littered with historical ironies.  Because of cold temperatures, qualifying and racing slopped over into the next day each day, forcing the final rounds into Monday for the first time ever.  So, a great many people called in sick and stayed to watch the history happen.

In those finals, Champion Speed Shop nostalgia fuel dragster pilot Adam Sorokin beat Howard Haight, a racer certifiably older than dirt itself, 5.76/241.61 to 5.93/246.23.

The poetry comes in the fact that Adam Sorokin was conceived at this race, where his late father, Mike Sorokin, won in 1966.  Sorokin senior was killed in a dragster clutch explosion in 1967, an event which led to the invention of the slider clutch, a whole list of safety standards for race cars and the establishment of the Sorokin Foundation.  Sorokin cried at the trophy presentation.
In Funny Car, veteran Gary Densham faced former nostalgia funny car ET and Top Speed recordholder Leah Pruett-LeDuc, he in the Teacher’s Pet ’69 Camaro, she in the Plueger & Gyger ’72 Mustang, on Monday.  She laid down a 5.81/242.65 pass to defeat Densham’s 5.98/236.34 to become the first woman ever to win a major title at Bakersfield.

If the success of the 2010 Bakersfield event, the packed pits, the elbow-to-elbow grandstands and the long lines for food and drink, can be taken as an omen, then the United States is in better shape then they’re telling us. Long may it wave.

Jim McCraw is a former editor of Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Super Stock, and a veteran automotive freelancer for such titles as Car and Driver, Road & Track, AutoWeek, Penthouse, The New York Times, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. He is an avid racing fan, high-performance car freak, seeker of nutballs and nutball cars, and lover of fast motorcycles who lives in Dearborn, Michigan. If he comes back as a car, he wants to be a 1968 Ford Mustang 428 Cobra Jet lightweight.