Behind the Scenes at NHRA: A Look at the Elite Motorsports Compound

As we step onto the grounds of the Pomona California Auto Club Raceway, it's clear that this is a world unlike any other. The scale of the pits and the complexity of the operations on display are a far cry from the typical street car racing experience. We're standing in front of the Elite Motorsports compound, home to six different cars, each with its own trailer and crew. The sheer size of the operation is impressive, with two semi-trailers and three trailers dedicated to just one team.

Our first stop is Jake Coughlin's team, where we find a wealth of knowledge on transmission gears and rear-end components. The options are limitless, and the math involved in creating these complex systems is mind-boggling. "Anyone who says that racing and math don't mix is wrong," our host says with a grin. This is a world where precision and attention to detail are paramount, and the team's expertise is on full display.

Next, we take a tour of Erica Enders' crew, which showcases the impressive array of spare parts and equipment needed to support their racing efforts. From engines to transmissions, every component is meticulously maintained and prepared for each race. The level of organization and attention to detail is staggering, with even the simplest tasks requiring careful planning and execution.

We also visit Aaron's championship trailer, where we're shown a sleek and well-appointed space that would be at home in any high-performance vehicle. The attention to detail is stunning, with every element carefully considered to ensure maximum performance and efficiency. "This is not an easy one to get," our host says, gesturing to the trailer. "It's a testament to the team's dedication and expertise."

As we make our way through the compound, we catch glimpses of the team's hospitality efforts. The crew's lounge is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and weather monitoring systems, which provide critical data for the team's strategists. "We're tracking trends in the weather," one of the team members explains. "Given these conditions, what are the 10 best runs we've made? We take that into consideration when making our decisions."

One of the most impressive aspects of this compound is the sheer number of people involved. With six cars and a crew of dozens, every member plays a vital role in the team's success. From chefs to mechanics, everyone works together seamlessly to ensure maximum performance and minimal downtime.

As we continue our tour, we come across an in-and-out truck, which has been converted into a mobile kitchen for the crew. "This is catering the banquet for any tray," our host says, laughing. It's a testament to the team's dedication and attention to detail, even in the most mundane aspects of their operations.

As we wrap up our behind-the-scenes tour, we're struck by the sheer scale and complexity of this operation. From the transmission gear to the weather monitoring systems, every element is carefully considered to ensure maximum performance and success. It's a world that's both fascinating and intimidating, where precision and attention to detail are paramount. And as we leave the compound behind, we can't help but appreciate the dedication and expertise of the teams involved in this high-octane sport.

The Winner's Circle: A Look at the NHRA Community

As we stand in the winner's circle, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the Pomona California Auto Club Raceway, it's clear that this is a community like no other. With over 30 people from In-N-Out employees walking past us, three semi-trucks loaded with food and supplies, it's easy to feel like we're part of something special.

The NHRA has always been a unique blend of speed, skill, and showmanship, but the Pomona event is particularly notable for its welcoming atmosphere. The fans are rowdy and enthusiastic, and the crew members are friendly and approachable. It's clear that everyone here is passionate about their work, from the mechanics to the pit crews.

As we take in the sights and sounds of the winner's circle, it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer scale and complexity of this operation. From the transmission gear to the weather monitoring systems, every element is carefully considered to ensure maximum performance and success. And as we leave the compound behind, we can't help but appreciate the dedication and expertise of the teams involved in this high-octane sport.

Scariest Part

Oh my god

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome to pomona california home of the beginning and end of nhra season we're here for the nhra finals at auto club raceway this is actually our first time filming at an nhra race and what we want to do for you guys is show you the behind the scenes of what makes nhra take meet some of the drivers see some of the behind the scenes of what makes the tv show work the track crews work and what it's like to be at nhra race at the top level of drag racing let's get to it to start things off this morning we're getting a tour from bryan lones one of the voices of nhra you've seen on tv he's gonna take us around the broadcast suites and the behind the scenes media that goes on here at andre i knew kyle like way before he was cool drag week 2000 you're right he was a kid with a camera it was just awkwardly asking everybody questions and look at him now see i'm still awkward we're gonna walk through some of the tv trucks here just give you guys an idea of how we make our uh our productions each week look at that so this truck is uh we call this kind of our c unit it's uh where we do our like streaming coverage starts here facetime he's like hey man these meters uh this room here uh occasionally we go to racetracks we don't have a dedicated booth and so we actually this this becomes our broadcast booth in here so oh you've broadcasted these monitors will be fired up and we've got all kinds of camera views me and tony working here sometimes with a guest but this is our kind of mobile studio you know i said this on drag week this would be yeah you guys might recognize brian from drag week two and he's announced with uh burger a few times so we're going to the next truck this is we call this one the a unit so this is where the actual production kind of gets okay the important stuff hello so this is where this is where the sound happens and that's his problem right there so he is uh i don't even know what happens in here but this is what makes the noises just start flicking some dials go out to the world but yeah this is a pretty legit recording studio in here so this is what we would call like the front and the back bench of uh of the production so melissa is the like legitimately the brains of this whole thing and so what she does is she's like has a million different responsibilities but a lot of like timing out the shows and everything that we do uh steve reinches who is the the kind of the lead let's call the executive producer works in the middle and then the technical director works over here and the technical director chris sits here he's the director director named gordon sits here and he calls all the shots calls a lot of the shots or kind of executes the maneuvers that chris wants to see and he's been at it for melissa how many years oh my gosh he would start at the cameraman in the 90s wow you've been at it i've been on it since 1996. that's cool yeah so it's a tape room right so so when we're making our shows this is where the this is where we like all the replays and all the stuff come from so okay um we have multiple operators back here and these guys are cutting together segments or like again instant replays getting pulled up slow-mo is getting pulled up segments getting built that we use later in the show and it's a freaking hustle bag very time sensitive there's tons of communication between that room and here um about you know what they're going to pull out what we need next what we want to see again that type of thing and again it's just the amount of like technology packed into these trucks is just freaking insane yeah no kidding all right sir we're uh that was two of two of how however many trucks you got yeah so then this is the graphics truck so again you're watching the show the graphics pop up or different things pop on the screen they all get made in here so again it's there are similarities between the two trucks but but you know lori and jen some other people work out of this unit and when they call it graphics they're making one spot hit the screen pretty wild so it kind of cruise back yeah this is lori and jen how's it going this is graphics world basically they're not hooked up right now but they do virtual graphics like what the first intent line would be in football our virtual graphics are like um logos on the on the um yeah and a few other things gotcha we're working on some staging graphics where you're going to be able to see exactly how deep someone's stage is on a with these point of view cameras and so they're working i don't know you're going to be able to see if the guy was six inches in or eight inches in so that's going to be kind of cool going forward yeah it's like the overlays using football and stuff it's all virtual it is the future yeah and then again more boards more more monitors and uh so this is like the this is where our broadcast booth is this weekend so they kind of okay that's we're going to be a peep camera in there so they can see uh you know make sure we get our pants on or whatever they're not sure what they're looking at but uh as long as the microphones aren't on we're usually in good shape so how many cameras are usually running because i see cam 55 at the top of the track yeah i was trying to think of this the other day if you add in all the cameras like the lock off cameras the booth camera and everything i want to say it's probably close to 12 when we get especially an event like this where we got championships so we're gonna have multiple uh remote cameras on the pits following a lot of different stuff and then we got the down track cameras camera six is the one that's all the way down at the sand trap um and then the stuff on the starting line so it's i'm gonna say it's about a dozen when we're really firing on all cylinders wow i think the last truck was really not a ton to see there it's uh psi so the vsi does um like our remote microphones the remote like into our cameras and stuff like that that's what these guys do okay yeah the fourth truck there's not a ton of stuff to see it's not doesn't really have a lot of the sexy stuff going on in there but again it's just a lot of sound hardware stuff like that yeah but yeah that's kind of our that's our tv compound usually on an event like this there'll be like about 65 people all in as far as production assistance camera people technical people engineers graphics people i mean tape room if you're looking at about 60 feet that's a wild program yeah it's crazy holy cow and we're gonna stop by and uh quietly watch them work later just to see what it's like when they're actually running full steam well thank you for the tuber you bet glad you guys got to check it out this little i've been in a broadcast truck before a long time ago but there were there weren't four of them yeah and make sure like you said it's coming later on when they're actually working in there and just kind of run the camera through and you'll see it's just it's a constant chat magic happens cool man thanks brian you bet and for when things get dark later they bring their own lighting to the tracks with them there's one here and there's one all the way down the track and then they have the jumbotron that folds out of this semi trailer got the boom out here for those shots you see on the starting line look at the jumbotron that comes in its own trailer next level there goes a plane by the way i don't know if you can zoom in enough on this but a plane just went over the scoreboards those are a lot shorter than normal scoreboards because a plane hit one once and so they dropped them down so it wasn't a obstacle that was just the burnout all right so what we got here is a wheel standing pt cruiser oh it's got flames so it's a pt cruiser which we all know are kind of lame this one's got a big blown i can't tell what it is big blown motor in the back and it just did a very easy feeling just during the burnout i have no doubt for a while how did he just howl that was the best wheel stand i've ever seen he did a 1250 at 105 on the back tires that's crazy and it looked like somehow he was steering i swear somehow he was steering oh okay both cars spun both cars had to pedal it i don't know who won right lane took that one i couldn't see anything at all is and i think what are we looking at here oh you put it on the ground push the button and if it says 1800 it's terrible if it says 3600 it's awesome all right i've seen the mechanical versions of that before but i've never seen you mean this guy yeah yeah exactly yeah i probably did about 25 000 of those poles oh my god so what are we at right now today uh i haven't done any yet we will soon all right keep an eye out for it you know those uh the track pullers check the the stickiness these are digital ones yeah oh oh wow so what does the nhra track normally pull it depends the farther you go the firmer it gets behind the line where the cars are constantly launching it might pull the rubber off and have pure concrete it's called a bald spot right now that that up there might yesterday was actually 22 to 2400 one foot over and good rubber was 2 900. go out to 10 feet and that was 3050. 60 feet was about 3200 300 3400 when you have pro mods hoosier greasy rubber 10 foot we might be in the heat of summer 1800 and over here is 2400. i think they say why do you got three temp guns imagine you go get a temp with your one gun with new batteries and it's blank what do you tell everyone you don't know no way when did you learn this trick the first time you had to tell somebody i don't know too many times yeah well thanks for the tour thank you that's cool thank you whole different level here this is nuts that is intense yeah it's like an rc car that drives down track that'll tell where the pumps are no way and then it's like oh that's a pump that's awesome this guy is like any track anytime creates a map he can tell you exactly what sticky words wow this is way more intense than stuff we've seen oh yeah oh yeah this guy's whole job is to do this for john yep we have six different guys on the track reading the track these are guys that are trying to see what the track is pulling for this round for when their car goes up there i believe anytime that the red lights are not flashing any crew guys can go up here and test the track as much data as these guys can get it's what they want so he'll be pulling he probably pulled from the starting line he probably pulled 60 foot now he's at about 100 feet he's probably going to keep pulling a little bit down the tracks just to see where the traction is and where it isn't also he's not only doing distance but he's doing like in between the lane like from closer to the center line to close to the wall anywhere in between he's trying to see where the traction is at so he knows where to tell the team to line up the car and all that stuff so if only your eyes get burned through video right now pretty bad so we came here to see what nhra is all about and we're following the main four classes that everyone watches on tv but there are other classes here that run can you explain the other classes and what they consist of yeah so any trainer national events can have up to 17 classes so like the us nationals has like 17. here we had a ton um so stock eliminator like classic muscle cars late model cars nine inch wide tire very restrictive rules on the drive train what you can and can't change full interior all that stuff go to super stock most of the same rules except you can get a little more creative you can back half the car you can run a big slick on the back of it you can be more uh creative with the engine modifications that you make those cars typically pull nice awesome wheel stands off of the starting line then we have what are called the super category so you have super gas which are 990 index cars every car on the racetrack is trying to go down the racetrack in 9.9 seconds getting to the finish line first without going under you can have a full body car a roadster or an alternate in that category meaning everything has to be left-hand steer super comp is an 890 index class same concept except the cars are a little faster a little more powerful they're trying to go 8.9 seconds mostly rear engine dragsters every once a while a guy sneaks a door car in there comp eliminator is a class that's just wacko it's wide open you have dragsters you have altereds you have full-bodied cars you have guys running four cylinders in line six you'll see volkswagens and engines in there all the combinations that you typically don't expect to see at any trade national event are in that category there's a funky one yeah it's wild top sportsman these are the quickest sportsman full body cars we have basically think of it as a mini pro mod style class six seven eight hundred cubic inch nitrous engines procharged engines blower engines occasionally turbos it's a dial in your own class you can run as quick as 610 but you have to dial handicap style racing top dragster same concept except it's fragsters and altereds only this weekend we had a guy with a 398 inch ls motor with twin turbos on it running the bottom half of the sixes it's a big car because everybody's here on the property only turbo car property everybody runs a big lock chevy with the centrifugal on it and it works and it's fast but this dude is doing it different and the car is great with that little tiny engine and really that's kind of a run through of our our sportsman categories here at the at the finals we can add other categories in like super street we can add a bunch of different stuff in there we had top alcohol funny car and top alcohol dragster here as well and those guys are pro level operations but to explain in a way that you might not you might understand let's call that the triple a league right you got a dragster that can go 5.1 seconds at about 280 miles an hour and this runs on injected nitromethane or you can have a funny car with a blown alcohol engine in it that runs like mid-fives at about 250 miles an hour a lot of people graduate from those classes to the nitro funny car and the top fuel ranks it's gonna have you guys out here i think it's super cool and i know that a lot of people that watch 1320 video aren't familiar with an hra or maybe think any trace sucks and i promise you it doesn't suck it's just a different way to go drag racing and kyle and the boys are going to do a great job showing everybody kind of the behind the scenes look so it's killer all right guys so part of this experience with hra is i don't get to be the guinea pig since i've never been to any church as they launched kyle said you get to do this really good choice you get to go do it it's going to be a good time these cars are freaking rowdy loudest things over here so i've been curious how loud these cars actually are i bought an audio meter to find that out but when i got it right before this race i found out that it's a max of 130 decibels so we're not testing from the starting line we're gonna test from about about a thousand feet down see which classes maxed us out we're doing pro stock right now then we're gonna get a funny car have a feeling funny car is gonna max it out here we go for pro stock nice all right we're almost maxed out 129.1 that goes to show you just how loud these cars are that's nuts 129 decibels standing about i don't know a couple hundred feet from the track at a thousand feet so 129 decibels in funny car i wonder if top fuel can top that they're pretty similar engines pretty much same thing who knows 129.1 the record so far there we go 375 side by side ah we have a new high score 129.9 on the meter that's what we're looking for just had to get a little closer to the track this might be max i don't know if it goes to 130 but uh you just have to experience this in person and feel it in your chest to know what this is actually all about it's it's nuts way down look at the car alarm going off from the parking lot across the street i wonder why you thought the delay in the sound was crazy from the grandstands being down here it's got to be two and two and a half seconds from when they you can see them launched when you hear them it's nuts oh messy run right lane left way late but still made across the finish first looks like and there goes an airplane ron capps coming up first round i'm excited to be down here to see his face when he wins first round ron coming out ahead been watching my is i'm watching my family we got like 80 people that keep showing my wife and everybody uh what they did last year was fun it's a group that just goes up from the general grandstands not reserved seats and there's about 80 to 100 of them bumped together and that is my support system and if we get to win this championship which is absolutely all of theirs it's our napa auto care people it's everybody around me this is not mine so wrong cap's down here on national tv and they're watching his reactions as the last two pairs go down the track to see what it's gonna take to win the championship looks like john force's car is on fire john force is at the top end of the track on fire again a little just a little fire which is no stranger to that there is so much news in the next couple of weeks since we're digging out the heavens light and the fun knows get together and then rev it up if you've ever been to an nhra race one of the things that you're guaranteed to notice right away is the scale of the pitch here especially compared to street car racing where you got 30 racers all piled up in one little small pit here we're standing in the top fuel pits right now and they go all the way down the semi trailers that you see with these racers are just ridiculous some of them are even linked together so you can walk through them between crews or just for one car even and the hospitality pits like over here in the napa look at the hospitality pits in here just for the crew their families the media it is a pretty interesting world definitely not a street car race we're here in front of the elite motorsports compound they have one two three trailers for i think six different cars we're gonna go take a tour of these we're gonna walk over here jake coughlin's cars right here we've got erica ender's next door we're gonna go see what's going on inside the setup woody hey man nice to meet you how are you good good so we're just checking it checking things out here come on we're going to take a tour of the yeah the jacks hauler all right let's see back here we uh we built transmissions okay and uh all in here we've got all of our transmission gears whoa yeah we have lots of options here the options are limitless they're limited this is just a huge math equation anybody that says that racing and math don't uh mix is wrong i like saying that when little kids come through it's like hey do you like math no creation yeah that's hilarious all right so transmission rear end gears on the right um we're at some rear ends spare parts aaron's championship trailer oh nice stock that's kind of nice that's not an easy one to get oh we got a spare engine down here oh there's two two in here we've got yeah yeah i want to save the time another engine okay this is a lot tighter than most race trailers we go through yeah well it gets wide here yeah um in here we basically have our our uh you know our crew chief lounge where everybody's just going through all the data um obviously weather is a huge thing this this computer is just devoted to weather that that just updates every hour every minute you know obviously weather's a big thing so you know typically chiefs are looking at this stuff a couple days before getting here making some some broad assumptions on on uh on on pieces and parts that we know that we'll use this thing's typically on for about two days before we have to make a decision um so we're able to to track trends true trends in the weather that we're dealing with today you know so one or several people are meteorologist experts yeah sometimes what to expect yeah it seems that way sometimes uh but that helps us to kind of be able to go back into our database and say you know given these conditions what are the 10 best runs that we made et wise you know corrected to sea level so we'll use that as a starting point you know we might have had advancements in engines since then so you know we kind of take that into consideration but uh but we got a really good group of people that work well together and uh no egos no attitudes we just have a good time and get it done and this room is responsible for how many cars this room is responsible right now for five cars wow no you got a couple cars that transport up here oh yeah got a mobile kitchen yeah i like that very funny chef yeah thanks for your time man come by anytime appreciate the tour no problem a little different than street car racing that's for sure last pair of cars for the season right now everyone flooding i think this might be only the second race i've been to where they let the fans flood the racetrack this is cool to watch but uh i was able to say something oh my god we're more than eight miles an hour um all right so in and out is literally catering the banquet for any tray now that is a flex right there wrapping up our behind-the-scenes video at nhra here in the winner's circle and as i'm standing here there's about 30 in and out employees walking past and three semi trucks of in and out trailers ready to prepare food for the banquet tonight what an interesting experience here in pomona california auto club raceway i appreciate you guys watching this video hope you enjoy this video and the behind the scenes look at what makes nhra what it is the racers the crews the safety the tv aspect of it make sure to subscribe for more 1320 videos and we'll catch you next time that was scariest oh my godwelcome to pomona california home of the beginning and end of nhra season we're here for the nhra finals at auto club raceway this is actually our first time filming at an nhra race and what we want to do for you guys is show you the behind the scenes of what makes nhra take meet some of the drivers see some of the behind the scenes of what makes the tv show work the track crews work and what it's like to be at nhra race at the top level of drag racing let's get to it to start things off this morning we're getting a tour from bryan lones one of the voices of nhra you've seen on tv he's gonna take us around the broadcast suites and the behind the scenes media that goes on here at andre i knew kyle like way before he was cool drag week 2000 you're right he was a kid with a camera it was just awkwardly asking everybody questions and look at him now see i'm still awkward we're gonna walk through some of the tv trucks here just give you guys an idea of how we make our uh our productions each week look at that so this truck is uh we call this kind of our c unit it's uh where we do our like streaming coverage starts here facetime he's like hey man these meters uh this room here uh occasionally we go to racetracks we don't have a dedicated booth and so we actually this this becomes our broadcast booth in here so oh you've broadcasted these monitors will be fired up and we've got all kinds of camera views me and tony working here sometimes with a guest but this is our kind of mobile studio you know i said this on drag week this would be yeah you guys might recognize brian from drag week two and he's announced with uh burger a few times so we're going to the next truck this is we call this one the a unit so this is where the actual production kind of gets okay the important stuff hello so this is where this is where the sound happens and that's his problem right there so he is uh i don't even know what happens in here but this is what makes the noises just start flicking some dials go out to the world but yeah this is a pretty legit recording studio in here so this is what we would call like the front and the back bench of uh of the production so melissa is the like legitimately the brains of this whole thing and so what she does is she's like has a million different responsibilities but a lot of like timing out the shows and everything that we do uh steve reinches who is the the kind of the lead let's call the executive producer works in the middle and then the technical director works over here and the technical director chris sits here he's the director director named gordon sits here and he calls all the shots calls a lot of the shots or kind of executes the maneuvers that chris wants to see and he's been at it for melissa how many years oh my gosh he would start at the cameraman in the 90s wow you've been at it i've been on it since 1996. that's cool yeah so it's a tape room right so so when we're making our shows this is where the this is where we like all the replays and all the stuff come from so okay um we have multiple operators back here and these guys are cutting together segments or like again instant replays getting pulled up slow-mo is getting pulled up segments getting built that we use later in the show and it's a freaking hustle bag very time sensitive there's tons of communication between that room and here um about you know what they're going to pull out what we need next what we want to see again that type of thing and again it's just the amount of like technology packed into these trucks is just freaking insane yeah no kidding all right sir we're uh that was two of two of how however many trucks you got yeah so then this is the graphics truck so again you're watching the show the graphics pop up or different things pop on the screen they all get made in here so again it's there are similarities between the two trucks but but you know lori and jen some other people work out of this unit and when they call it graphics they're making one spot hit the screen pretty wild so it kind of cruise back yeah this is lori and jen how's it going this is graphics world basically they're not hooked up right now but they do virtual graphics like what the first intent line would be in football our virtual graphics are like um logos on the on the um yeah and a few other things gotcha we're working on some staging graphics where you're going to be able to see exactly how deep someone's stage is on a with these point of view cameras and so they're working i don't know you're going to be able to see if the guy was six inches in or eight inches in so that's going to be kind of cool going forward yeah it's like the overlays using football and stuff it's all virtual it is the future yeah and then again more boards more more monitors and uh so this is like the this is where our broadcast booth is this weekend so they kind of okay that's we're going to be a peep camera in there so they can see uh you know make sure we get our pants on or whatever they're not sure what they're looking at but uh as long as the microphones aren't on we're usually in good shape so how many cameras are usually running because i see cam 55 at the top of the track yeah i was trying to think of this the other day if you add in all the cameras like the lock off cameras the booth camera and everything i want to say it's probably close to 12 when we get especially an event like this where we got championships so we're gonna have multiple uh remote cameras on the pits following a lot of different stuff and then we got the down track cameras camera six is the one that's all the way down at the sand trap um and then the stuff on the starting line so it's i'm gonna say it's about a dozen when we're really firing on all cylinders wow i think the last truck was really not a ton to see there it's uh psi so the vsi does um like our remote microphones the remote like into our cameras and stuff like that that's what these guys do okay yeah the fourth truck there's not a ton of stuff to see it's not doesn't really have a lot of the sexy stuff going on in there but again it's just a lot of sound hardware stuff like that yeah but yeah that's kind of our that's our tv compound usually on an event like this there'll be like about 65 people all in as far as production assistance camera people technical people engineers graphics people i mean tape room if you're looking at about 60 feet that's a wild program yeah it's crazy holy cow and we're gonna stop by and uh quietly watch them work later just to see what it's like when they're actually running full steam well thank you for the tuber you bet glad you guys got to check it out this little i've been in a broadcast truck before a long time ago but there were there weren't four of them yeah and make sure like you said it's coming later on when they're actually working in there and just kind of run the camera through and you'll see it's just it's a constant chat magic happens cool man thanks brian you bet and for when things get dark later they bring their own lighting to the tracks with them there's one here and there's one all the way down the track and then they have the jumbotron that folds out of this semi trailer got the boom out here for those shots you see on the starting line look at the jumbotron that comes in its own trailer next level there goes a plane by the way i don't know if you can zoom in enough on this but a plane just went over the scoreboards those are a lot shorter than normal scoreboards because a plane hit one once and so they dropped them down so it wasn't a obstacle that was just the burnout all right so what we got here is a wheel standing pt cruiser oh it's got flames so it's a pt cruiser which we all know are kind of lame this one's got a big blown i can't tell what it is big blown motor in the back and it just did a very easy feeling just during the burnout i have no doubt for a while how did he just howl that was the best wheel stand i've ever seen he did a 1250 at 105 on the back tires that's crazy and it looked like somehow he was steering i swear somehow he was steering oh okay both cars spun both cars had to pedal it i don't know who won right lane took that one i couldn't see anything at all is and i think what are we looking at here oh you put it on the ground push the button and if it says 1800 it's terrible if it says 3600 it's awesome all right i've seen the mechanical versions of that before but i've never seen you mean this guy yeah yeah exactly yeah i probably did about 25 000 of those poles oh my god so what are we at right now today uh i haven't done any yet we will soon all right keep an eye out for it you know those uh the track pullers check the the stickiness these are digital ones yeah oh oh wow so what does the nhra track normally pull it depends the farther you go the firmer it gets behind the line where the cars are constantly launching it might pull the rubber off and have pure concrete it's called a bald spot right now that that up there might yesterday was actually 22 to 2400 one foot over and good rubber was 2 900. go out to 10 feet and that was 3050. 60 feet was about 3200 300 3400 when you have pro mods hoosier greasy rubber 10 foot we might be in the heat of summer 1800 and over here is 2400. i think they say why do you got three temp guns imagine you go get a temp with your one gun with new batteries and it's blank what do you tell everyone you don't know no way when did you learn this trick the first time you had to tell somebody i don't know too many times yeah well thanks for the tour thank you that's cool thank you whole different level here this is nuts that is intense yeah it's like an rc car that drives down track that'll tell where the pumps are no way and then it's like oh that's a pump that's awesome this guy is like any track anytime creates a map he can tell you exactly what sticky words wow this is way more intense than stuff we've seen oh yeah oh yeah this guy's whole job is to do this for john yep we have six different guys on the track reading the track these are guys that are trying to see what the track is pulling for this round for when their car goes up there i believe anytime that the red lights are not flashing any crew guys can go up here and test the track as much data as these guys can get it's what they want so he'll be pulling he probably pulled from the starting line he probably pulled 60 foot now he's at about 100 feet he's probably going to keep pulling a little bit down the tracks just to see where the traction is and where it isn't also he's not only doing distance but he's doing like in between the lane like from closer to the center line to close to the wall anywhere in between he's trying to see where the traction is at so he knows where to tell the team to line up the car and all that stuff so if only your eyes get burned through video right now pretty bad so we came here to see what nhra is all about and we're following the main four classes that everyone watches on tv but there are other classes here that run can you explain the other classes and what they consist of yeah so any trainer national events can have up to 17 classes so like the us nationals has like 17. here we had a ton um so stock eliminator like classic muscle cars late model cars nine inch wide tire very restrictive rules on the drive train what you can and can't change full interior all that stuff go to super stock most of the same rules except you can get a little more creative you can back half the car you can run a big slick on the back of it you can be more uh creative with the engine modifications that you make those cars typically pull nice awesome wheel stands off of the starting line then we have what are called the super category so you have super gas which are 990 index cars every car on the racetrack is trying to go down the racetrack in 9.9 seconds getting to the finish line first without going under you can have a full body car a roadster or an alternate in that category meaning everything has to be left-hand steer super comp is an 890 index class same concept except the cars are a little faster a little more powerful they're trying to go 8.9 seconds mostly rear engine dragsters every once a while a guy sneaks a door car in there comp eliminator is a class that's just wacko it's wide open you have dragsters you have altereds you have full-bodied cars you have guys running four cylinders in line six you'll see volkswagens and engines in there all the combinations that you typically don't expect to see at any trade national event are in that category there's a funky one yeah it's wild top sportsman these are the quickest sportsman full body cars we have basically think of it as a mini pro mod style class six seven eight hundred cubic inch nitrous engines procharged engines blower engines occasionally turbos it's a dial in your own class you can run as quick as 610 but you have to dial handicap style racing top dragster same concept except it's fragsters and altereds only this weekend we had a guy with a 398 inch ls motor with twin turbos on it running the bottom half of the sixes it's a big car because everybody's here on the property only turbo car property everybody runs a big lock chevy with the centrifugal on it and it works and it's fast but this dude is doing it different and the car is great with that little tiny engine and really that's kind of a run through of our our sportsman categories here at the at the finals we can add other categories in like super street we can add a bunch of different stuff in there we had top alcohol funny car and top alcohol dragster here as well and those guys are pro level operations but to explain in a way that you might not you might understand let's call that the triple a league right you got a dragster that can go 5.1 seconds at about 280 miles an hour and this runs on injected nitromethane or you can have a funny car with a blown alcohol engine in it that runs like mid-fives at about 250 miles an hour a lot of people graduate from those classes to the nitro funny car and the top fuel ranks it's gonna have you guys out here i think it's super cool and i know that a lot of people that watch 1320 video aren't familiar with an hra or maybe think any trace sucks and i promise you it doesn't suck it's just a different way to go drag racing and kyle and the boys are going to do a great job showing everybody kind of the behind the scenes look so it's killer all right guys so part of this experience with hra is i don't get to be the guinea pig since i've never been to any church as they launched kyle said you get to do this really good choice you get to go do it it's going to be a good time these cars are freaking rowdy loudest things over here so i've been curious how loud these cars actually are i bought an audio meter to find that out but when i got it right before this race i found out that it's a max of 130 decibels so we're not testing from the starting line we're gonna test from about about a thousand feet down see which classes maxed us out we're doing pro stock right now then we're gonna get a funny car have a feeling funny car is gonna max it out here we go for pro stock nice all right we're almost maxed out 129.1 that goes to show you just how loud these cars are that's nuts 129 decibels standing about i don't know a couple hundred feet from the track at a thousand feet so 129 decibels in funny car i wonder if top fuel can top that they're pretty similar engines pretty much same thing who knows 129.1 the record so far there we go 375 side by side ah we have a new high score 129.9 on the meter that's what we're looking for just had to get a little closer to the track this might be max i don't know if it goes to 130 but uh you just have to experience this in person and feel it in your chest to know what this is actually all about it's it's nuts way down look at the car alarm going off from the parking lot across the street i wonder why you thought the delay in the sound was crazy from the grandstands being down here it's got to be two and two and a half seconds from when they you can see them launched when you hear them it's nuts oh messy run right lane left way late but still made across the finish first looks like and there goes an airplane ron capps coming up first round i'm excited to be down here to see his face when he wins first round ron coming out ahead been watching my is i'm watching my family we got like 80 people that keep showing my wife and everybody uh what they did last year was fun it's a group that just goes up from the general grandstands not reserved seats and there's about 80 to 100 of them bumped together and that is my support system and if we get to win this championship which is absolutely all of theirs it's our napa auto care people it's everybody around me this is not mine so wrong cap's down here on national tv and they're watching his reactions as the last two pairs go down the track to see what it's gonna take to win the championship looks like john force's car is on fire john force is at the top end of the track on fire again a little just a little fire which is no stranger to that there is so much news in the next couple of weeks since we're digging out the heavens light and the fun knows get together and then rev it up if you've ever been to an nhra race one of the things that you're guaranteed to notice right away is the scale of the pitch here especially compared to street car racing where you got 30 racers all piled up in one little small pit here we're standing in the top fuel pits right now and they go all the way down the semi trailers that you see with these racers are just ridiculous some of them are even linked together so you can walk through them between crews or just for one car even and the hospitality pits like over here in the napa look at the hospitality pits in here just for the crew their families the media it is a pretty interesting world definitely not a street car race we're here in front of the elite motorsports compound they have one two three trailers for i think six different cars we're gonna go take a tour of these we're gonna walk over here jake coughlin's cars right here we've got erica ender's next door we're gonna go see what's going on inside the setup woody hey man nice to meet you how are you good good so we're just checking it checking things out here come on we're going to take a tour of the yeah the jacks hauler all right let's see back here we uh we built transmissions okay and uh all in here we've got all of our transmission gears whoa yeah we have lots of options here the options are limitless they're limited this is just a huge math equation anybody that says that racing and math don't uh mix is wrong i like saying that when little kids come through it's like hey do you like math no creation yeah that's hilarious all right so transmission rear end gears on the right um we're at some rear ends spare parts aaron's championship trailer oh nice stock that's kind of nice that's not an easy one to get oh we got a spare engine down here oh there's two two in here we've got yeah yeah i want to save the time another engine okay this is a lot tighter than most race trailers we go through yeah well it gets wide here yeah um in here we basically have our our uh you know our crew chief lounge where everybody's just going through all the data um obviously weather is a huge thing this this computer is just devoted to weather that that just updates every hour every minute you know obviously weather's a big thing so you know typically chiefs are looking at this stuff a couple days before getting here making some some broad assumptions on on uh on on pieces and parts that we know that we'll use this thing's typically on for about two days before we have to make a decision um so we're able to to track trends true trends in the weather that we're dealing with today you know so one or several people are meteorologist experts yeah sometimes what to expect yeah it seems that way sometimes uh but that helps us to kind of be able to go back into our database and say you know given these conditions what are the 10 best runs that we made et wise you know corrected to sea level so we'll use that as a starting point you know we might have had advancements in engines since then so you know we kind of take that into consideration but uh but we got a really good group of people that work well together and uh no egos no attitudes we just have a good time and get it done and this room is responsible for how many cars this room is responsible right now for five cars wow no you got a couple cars that transport up here oh yeah got a mobile kitchen yeah i like that very funny chef yeah thanks for your time man come by anytime appreciate the tour no problem a little different than street car racing that's for sure last pair of cars for the season right now everyone flooding i think this might be only the second race i've been to where they let the fans flood the racetrack this is cool to watch but uh i was able to say something oh my god we're more than eight miles an hour um all right so in and out is literally catering the banquet for any tray now that is a flex right there wrapping up our behind-the-scenes video at nhra here in the winner's circle and as i'm standing here there's about 30 in and out employees walking past and three semi trucks of in and out trailers ready to prepare food for the banquet tonight what an interesting experience here in pomona california auto club raceway i appreciate you guys watching this video hope you enjoy this video and the behind the scenes look at what makes nhra what it is the racers the crews the safety the tv aspect of it make sure to subscribe for more 1320 videos and we'll catch you next time that was scariest oh my god\n"