Yahoo Autos How About a Little NHRA Cross-Promotion with F1 at Las Vegas or COTA
If Formula 1 fans were to see an exhibition of raw horsepower from an NHRA Top Fuel or Funny Car, it would shake them to their FIA-approved flameproof underwear.
In the spirit of promoting motorsport, a long, smoky burnout would be enough to grab the crowd’s attention.
All we're asking for is a few minutes next fall during the F1 weekend for an NHRA-style burnout or two on the Las Vegas strip.
After NASCAR repaved the iconic Olympic and football venue Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and turned it into a stock-car short track for a wildly successful weekend earlier this year, the NHRA needs to grab up the thrown-down gauntlet.
Excuse us to dream on the NHRA for a moment.
Imagine Formula 1 and local authorities at next fall’s Formula 1 night race through the heart of Las Vegas providing the perfect stage for drag racing to showcase its sensory-overload experience.
The NHRA’s Camping World Drag Racing Series, on the surface, sounds incongruous with the wine-and-brie elite open-wheel set. But if those F1 fans were to see an exhibition of raw horsepower from a Top Fuel or Funny Car—one that blasts from a standing start to 330-plus mph in less than four seconds—it would shake them to their FIA-approved flameproof underwear.
All we're asking for is a few moments next fall during the F1 weekend for an NHRA-style burnout or two on the Las Vegas strip.
Already a captivating spectacle with its ear-splitting cackle and roar, smoky tire smaze, sticky-sweet nitro odor, and bone-rattling launch, an NHRA Top Fuel or Funny Car could show off another kind of motorsports that happens at Las Vegas twice a year, sometimes four-wide in 44,000-horsepower glory.
It’s an engineering feat that would mesmerize F1’s finest.
So “How about it?” Funny Car racer Alexis DeJoria says.
She told Autoweek, “That would be incredible. Put in a good word for me.”
All right . . . here we go:
Stefano Domenicali, you’re the president and CEO of Formula 1. You love fast cars. You were born in Imola, right in the pocket of Italy’s motorsports passion, for goodness sake. You worked with Ferrari and Lamborghini. You would love these Top Fuel and Funny Car beasts. The sheer power would impress you.
So would Alexis DeJoria. She’s fearless. She has been aboard the Sea Shepherd, getting a first-hand look in choppy ocean waters at how to help endangered animals. Years ago, she traveled to North Korea on a diplomatic mission. She has modeled and worked with her entrepreneur billionaire father John Paul DeJoria and even has been up for a culture-shock move from funky, skateboard-surfing-centric Venice Beach, Calif., to Austin, Texas, where she has lived on a ranch and even raised pigs and chickens and explored her faith. She says “badass” and “I’m stoked” at lot but easily can carry on an intelligent conversation beyond racing and is a thoughtful single mom of a bright young woman. She has elaborate and colorful tattoos adorning her arms, but don’t let that scare you. She’s the sweetest, happiest, easy-going woman – oh, until she gets into a race car – an 11,000-horsepower, fire-belching beast called a Funny Car . . . which, by the way, produces speeds about 100 mph more than the sleek and artsy machines of F1. Anyway, she’s relentless. You would love her.
But you would love what she can do in that race car. And what a chance you have to let her shine at your Formula 1 race at Las Vegas, where her family has lived and she has won a couple of times at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway just north of the city.
So how does all that affect you? Oh, Stefano, just picture it. Alexis—and someone from the Top Fuel class (those are the long, skinny cars that also launch at nearly 6Gs and throw out parachutes to stop at a negative 5Gs and literally can tear your eyeballs’ retinas)—can warm up your crowd. It would be great—talk to the mayor of Las Vegas or whoever you need permission from. Alexis and her Top Fuel colleague could do a long, smoky burnout right down The Strip. If that didn’t get the crowd’s attention, nothing will.
