Doorcarpalooza

or should that be Super Chevy day at Mooresville Dragway?

What a lineup of cars!   The quick 16 were definately in the QUICK category and every one of them were running all out.  Most up around 175 in the 1/8 and in the mid 4′s.  I think the Mo Pars and the Fords were truly outnumbered today.  Here are a few of my favorite shots of the fantastic action today.

Corvettes – couldn’t count them all.

Here the O’Reilly Auto Parts / Cheerwine corvette warms up the tires.

and then goes on to knock off another round.

Here the Hendrick Durham AutoMall corvette is working his way thru the qualifying tree.

I think one of everyone’s favorites, including mine, was this 55 Corvette.

Here a Chevy Nova tries to save some wear & tear on the front tires coming off the line.

I always like to position myself right about where the cars stop after their burnouts.  If I rack my 80 – 200 way out I can get some cool shots of the drivers in the cars.  In this one, I got a drivers view of the track from the reflection in his sunglasses.

By this time of day the sun was getting low and I knew I could get some good shots of the cars on the big end.  I took the hike down that way to capture some of the shots below.  I snuck up real close to the guardrail to get these.  I always keep my other eye open to watch for an unruley chute getting to close to my guardrail.

Here a Corvette uses both chutes to get stopped after a 175+ MPH run.

Here a nice 69 Camaro relies on the binders to get stopped.

At first I thought this Camaro was slidding the tires a bit, but I think he ended giving a little more than he had on this run.  Short intermission while the clean-up crew removed some expensive engine oil from the track!

So now I’m way off in BFE by myself, my Ipod way back in the truck, no tunes to listen too and getting really bored watching the clean-up crew mosey up and down the track when I heard this noise up in the sky.  Amazing how I can entertain myself when I have too!  There was a cow pasture behind me, but I decided on posting the copter pic instead!

So now I’m back to work and grab a couple of more good shots on the big end.  Now it’s starting to get a little to dark out here in BFE, so I take the hike back up to the line for round 3.  Just in time to catch this beautiful split window coming off the line.

Here Larry Leazer’s Camaro gets some good bite off the line.

Another nice Camaro doing a burnout!

Talk about being in the right place at the right time – or should that be the other way around.  I heard this loud pop, saw a ball of fire and a lot of people yelling.  The motor coughed and shot the scoop into the air like a cannon.  It landed 3′ behind me.  That’s nitrous escaping from a severed line.  Another intermission so the clean-up crew could earn their keep!

It was really starting to get dark, which meant I was loosing shutter speed really fast.  My ISO was up around 3200 and since my D300 isn’t anything like it’s big brother I had to call it a night.  I did manage to get a good shot of the fire coming out of the exhaust of this 57 Chevy.