Car Craft Street Race - Straight Scoop

Join The New Car Craft Street Race!

Remember a few years ago when this magazine created and hyped the class called Cheap Street within the PRO/Edelbrock Drag Racing Series? It was the low-buck class, with stock suspension, heavily restricted small-blocks, tiny nitrous kits, and a controversial claimer rule on the engine. It got tons of good press as the first affordable heads-up drag class. Which was great in theory, except that no one cared. Only about a dozen cars ever raced the class, and at some events, just two cars showed up. So Cheap Street is kaput. Finito. Gonzo, adios, outta here. Despite lots of bench racing about how to finesse the rules to make Cheap Street work, Car Craft and PRO decided there was no saving it.

But we have a new plan: Car Craft Street Race. That's the name of the class and its the ethic, too. The brainchild was PRO's dwarf genius James Lawrence, who listened to our craving for a legit heads-up class for bolt-together cars that would always be within reach of the average guy. His answer was a single class where big-blocks and small-blocks of nearly any make can go head-to-head with weight breaks for naturally aspirated combos as well as for those with nitrous, blowers, or turbos. The big equalizer will be street-legal 28x11.50-15 slicks or up to 275/60 drag radials. The payouts have doubled, and to keep the field even, here's the big innovation: winners at each race will be required to carry an extra 20 pounds at the following event, and runners-up will get dinged 10 pounds. So, if one car wins five events in a row, it'll go into the sixth race 100 pounds heavier than its standard weight break. Pretty interesting, and we at Car Craft can't wait to see which power-combo ends up on top. We'll be following the series here in Straight Scoop, and we'll attend several of the races to produce full coverage, starting with the Beech Bend event.

Also, the National Muscle Car Association name is back. Through a twist of corporate payola too circuitous to follow, PROmedia (owner of the NMRA and the PRO/Edelbrock Drag Racing Series) will now hold its non-Mustang events under the NMCA banner, bringing fastest street car racing back to where it started. Each race also has a car show sponsored by Car Craft, so you don't have to race to join in the action. Coverage of both the race and the show will appear in every issue of Fastest Street Car magazine.

Tell us what you think by e-mailing CarCraft@primedia.com or by pitching in on the forum at CarCraft.com. We'd really like to see photos of some of the cars you're planning to bring. To get the detailed rules for the Street Race class, to register for an event, to show up as a spectator, or to subscribe to Fastest Street Car magazine, see the NMCA Web site at fasteststreetcar.com or call 866/694-3475. See you at the track.-David Freiburger

By David Freiburger

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