"Eagle One is proud to acknowledge and reward these car clubs for turning their passion for cars into compassion for others," said Valvoline VP Rolf Linder. Eagle One will donate a $250 check to charities designated by each of the honored clubs. In addition, each club will receive an award and a large supply of Eagle One and Valvoline products.
Read All About It: "Quarter-Mile Chaos"If there's anything we love nearly as much as hot rodding, it's mayhem. Now, one of drag racing's top photographers has packed plenty of both into a recently published book from CarTech, titled "Quarter-Mile Chaos: Images of Drag Racing Mayhem."
Steve Reyes is one of those insane guys you see down at the guardrail when you go to the drags, standing there shooting as the Fuelers, Funnies, Altereds, and Gassers go roaring by inches away. He's also the one standing there shooting when they slide out of control, stand straight up, burst into fireballs, blow up, flip over, crash into things, and fling parts all over the track. That only happens once in a while, but when you've been pointing a camera at quarter-mile action for 40 years, as Reyes has been, you eventually accumulate enough shots of dragsters erupting in flames or kabooming into a million bits to fill an entire book-an entire 178-page, large-format book to be exact.
After the first six interesting and important word-packed pages about his career and the glory days of drag racing, Reyes lets his pictures do the talking. The rest of "Q-MC:IDRM" is filled with page after page of large photos, 200 in all, with informative captions to put the chaos in context. The photos are astonishing and sometimes heart stopping, delivering a close-up look that you could never get from the safety of the grandstands. How Reyes always managed to be in exactly the right spot at the right time (and lived to get his film processed) is a real mystery. For example, the sequence of shots of the Lane Brothers' Corvette gasser heading for the 18-inch high guardrail at Lions Drag Strip shows other photographers darting for safety; Reyes doesn't budge and captures the whole thing. When Don Waite's Altered looks like its speeding right toward him at Pomona, Reyes gets the head-on shot as the roadster smashes through the Christmas tree. But it's not all mid-action commotion. The still-life close-up of a piston and crumbled pieces of a connecting rod lying within the engine-less 'rails of the Bob Dumont Top Fueler is as dramatic as any other image in the book.
Almost all of these photos were taken in the short period between 1967 and 1974-what Reyes calls drag racing's golden years, when "drivers were fearless and drove by the seat of their pants." So in a way, Reyes' photos aren't just images of chaos and mayhem; they are images of the intensity and unpredictability of drag racing during it's greatest era, the potential and real danger of the dragsters, and the skill and courage of the men who drove them.
"Quarter-Mile Chaos" retails for $39.95. Look for it in the automotive mayhem section of your favorite bookstore or from those Internet booksellers, or simply order one directly from CarTech by calling (800) 551-4754 or visiting www.cartechbooks.com.