Long before corporate sponsorships and wind-tunnel aerodynamics, drag racing was raw, dangerous, and fiercely personal. The quarter mile became a proving ground where unknown mechanics turned beat-up ...

However, look at the faces of the racers in our gallery. The vast majority of them are smiling. As one racer put it this year, "Drag Week is the most difficult thing you can't wait to do every year." ...

In 1952, the brilliant Rod & Custom magazine writer Roger Huntington did some math to figure out the quickest possible quarter-mile time drag racers would ever achieve: Just 9.1 seconds at 166 mph. He ...