One of the most interesting things to consider, especially in the current state of popularity for what the global state of street legal and endurance drag racing looks like, is the fact that the seed took so long to germinate. Consider the fact that long before WWII hot rodders in the western US would take long trips in their cars to get to the dry lakes and beat the stuffing out of them all day and then turn around and drive them home. It’s in the culture and fabric of hot rodding to actually drive the machines we build and then test them to their limits, so why did it take the better part of 70 years to actually start this whole craze?

Freiburger, from the jump, said that One Lap of America was his inspiration for the creation of Drag Week. That and the storyline of Two Lane Blacktop, the movie which gave the world the coolest 1955 Chevy in history, a few busted lines of dialog about changing carburetor jets, and the story of two guys street racing and drag racing their way across America in a weird race with Warren Oates in his GTO Judge.

One Lap of America was inspired by the famed Brock Yates Cannonball Run events which will live in gearhead lore until the end of time. One Lap takes the street driving concept to the extreme as the competitors must race in a variety of different venues, and yes there is typically a drag strip in there, while covering many hundreds of miles each day. While I’d argue that the majority of the cars in One Lap are more suited to the street driving task than hardcore drag racing machinery, the two concepts dovetail into each other perfectly.

The baby steps toward full blown drag-and-drive events were the birth of the Fastest Street Car Shootout in the early 1990s and then the explosive popularity of True Street at many drag racing events shortly after and into the 2000s and the Pump Gas Drags which took the same concept and employed it at Memphis Motorsports Park for several years in the early 2000s as well. Many forget that there was a brief overlap period between the start of Drag Week and the conclusion of the Pump Gas Drags. Taking nothing away from the PGD competitors, the 1,000 mile torture test made the 30 mile Memphis drive look quaint.

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But even in those early stages, the event was not that popular. It’s actually kind of amazing it lived long enough to take off given the expense of putting it on and the small (but growing) numbers of participants those first few years. It almost looks like there was some sort of collective lack of confidence or fear of the mechanical boogeyman back then. Like your one crazy buddy who would always be the first to dive headlong into a frigid swimming pool you didn’t want to dip a toe into, those early racers served as that same guy yelling back at you, “C’mon man, it’s not that bad once you get in. Don’t be a wimp!”

Eventually the idea that if your car could make a 30 mile True Street cruise, it could probably make a 300 mile drag-and-drive leg and if it could do that, why wouldn’t the thing be able to make the whole trip? Technology to “improve” the street manners of hardcore cars with advances in fuel and cooling systems, the relentless support of people like Rick Johnson with Gear Vendors, and others seemed to cause a collective awakening to the idea of casting fear aside and simply going out and doing it.

The bottom line is this, drag-and-drive is the most modern, hardcore, and entertaining throwback to those early days of hot rodding where driving into the desert in your home built creation, stripping the fenders off, and hoping to run 100mph on the dry lakes was as good as it got. You’re all doing the same thing in your own way and those pioneering souls of generations past would be proud to see what you’ve accomplished.