Adam Dorey: Rolling Deep or Flying Solo?
Ask any seasoned drag-and-driver and they’ll tell you that the road portion is the hardest part of these events. Sucesses on the drag strip are easily put into check if your street drive ends your hopes of completing the event, and the age-old adage comes violently into focus: to finish first, first you must finish.
With so many variables thrown your way on the road, does it pay to ride in a group, or do you go rogue and ride alone? I’ll lay out some real-life pros and cons for each.
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On the surface, the question seems like it has an easy answer. Riding with a group of people seems like the obvious solution, and there are many pros to riding around with your friends, or soon to be friends, along the route. There’s safety in numbers, and odds are good someone in the pack has a tool or part that you may need, or vice versa, you’ve got something they may need.
However, the pros list starts dwindling quickly, especially if you end up in a large pack. A drive-team is only as fast as the slowest ride in the chain, so if your car is capable of cruising at near triple-digit speeds, and the guy in the front of the line has a slippery converter and a Powerglide with 4.56 gears, you’re going to be pulling your hair out in the first twenty miles of a 400 mile drive. A team is also only as reliable as the biggest pile of junk. Even if your program is well sorted, you’ll need to pull over every time your less meticulous new buddy does, and Murphy’s Law is going to have you pulled over with nine other cars on the smallest shoulder available every time. That’s going to get old quickly.
To take advantage of the pros for riding with a pack, you need to strategically choose your members. If you have, say, an LS swapped G-body, you might want to pick out other LS swapped G-bodies to cruise with. Again, you can likely share parts and tools along the way, just in case. But Murphy’s head will pop up again and getcha, and you won't even know it yet. The guy that had the one widget you need is going to break on day two, and you’ll need his widget on day three. He’ll tell you that he’s got that thing you need, it’s just now back in his trailer at the host track with his steaming pile of crap car.
Being in a pack can help with navigating - providing the leader is worth their salt at reading directions. It’s difficult enough to find a place for one car to turn around on a busy highway when you miss a turn, it’s a whole different proposition to turn around a dozen cars with varying capability and with or without trailers.
Personally, I like to ride with people with rides at least as reliable as mine, and ones that cruise as fast as I can, and at least for one or two of the drives, with some new people. This typically puts me in a group with T56 cars, as a couple of overdrives make the street drives fast and fun. Bill Armstrong, Rich Guido, Bob Guido, and a few others throughout the years have been part of the Tremec Trio, or if there’s more than three of us, the Tremec Troop. Every member of this group has their program well sorted out, and if they end up needing help, they only need help with labor typically. Also, it’s good to know that Bill overheats under 88 MPH, and Rich overheats over 96 MPH, so we’re cruising from 89-95 as often as possible. Our bladders hold about the same amount, and that fills up before our fuel tanks empty, typically.
What say you? Who do you caravan with? Or are you a rogue loner? If you came here from Facebook, go back to the comments and let us know!
-Adam Dorey
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