Drag Week or One Lap?

[TheJDMan]

I'm curious what you guys think is the more demanding event and better test of cars and drivers.

Hot Rod says their Drag Week is the ultimate test of car and driver but it is limited to driving to a drag strip, making some runs and driving to another drag strip.

On the other hand the One Lap Challenge is a mix of different types of tracks and racing which seems to me to be a better balanced test.

[Flash68]

Man that is a good question. Both are stellar events.


I'll sum it up this way:

1) a 6 second Drag Week car is MUCH more impressive than a late model brand X doing One Lap

2) Shipka's, Day's, or Casanova's One Lap cars are MUCH more impressive than a 10 second Drag Week car

[GregWeld]

Originally Posted by TheJDMan

I'm curious what you guys think is the more demanding event and better test of cars and drivers.

Hot Rod says their Drag Week is the ultimate test of car and driver but it is limited to driving to a drag strip, making some runs and driving to another drag strip.

On the other hand the One Lap Challenge is a mix of different types of tracks and racing which seems to me to be a better balanced test.

It almost has to be One Lap --- they drive farther --- do all kinds of racing not just drag racing (boring)... and have so many rules about what they can do etc not to mention the sleep deprivation!

[Sieg]

One is a motor with wheels, the other is a car.

[James OLC]

I think they are both great events and we're fortunate that folks like Hot Rod and Brock Yates Jr. have put together events like these.

One Lap is about 3X the distance that drag week is. Given the level of attrition in DW I'm not sure if many (any) of the cars would finish. The transit stages for both are, in many ways, the hardest part of the event. The fact that we live in a time where 600+ HP NA and 2000+ HP blowers cars can survive on the street is awesome and both events show that.

You can be competitive in One Lap with a car worth less thank $25k; I would doubt that would get you much for Drag Week. That said, when I had my drag car I converted to a street car since there are only so many weekends in this summer so I suppose if you had a pro-mod car sitting around collecting dust this gives you a change to leg it out a bit.

Hot Rod is probably right - drag week probably is the ultimate test of single purpose built (Drag race) cars and their drivers.

One Lap is probably the ultimate test for performance and reliability of multi-purpose (?) street driven cars and their non/semi professional drivers.

Again - hats off to Hot Rod for coming up with a better test for "fastest street car" racing. Back in the day Fastest Street Car racing consisted of more cars than not blowing up on their way to an 8-second pass after surviving a 30 mile drive on a closed road.

And likewise - hats off to Brock Yates Jr. for coming up with a modern (and legal) version of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash (Cannonball Run). The beauty of the One Lap of America today is that their are no rules and anyone can enter in just about anything that drives.