After a long season coming for the NHRA tour it came down to the final race at the most historic track on the NHRA circuit in Pomona, CA. On top of the high number of professional cars it is always a great event to cover for the fact that the champions will be crowned in all classes. This is a long blog but I assure you its a good one!
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With the “regular season” of the 2011 NHRA tour in the books it was time for everyone to turn up the heat as the six race “playoffs” began at zMax Dragway near Charlotte, NC. The track referred to as the “Bellagio of drag strips” would treat us to a historically quick weekend!
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Following the wild and exciting weekend I had in Bristol at my last NHRA race I pretty much knew this weekend would not be near as good for photos but I was still excited to check out Route 66 raceway in Joliet, IL. This track along with Denver, CO and Brainerd, MN are the three remaining tracks on the NHRA tour I have not yet been to.
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A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a pretty cool project for ESPN the Magazine. To make a long story short they hired 25 photographers around the world to all shoot a sporting event on the same day (May 7th). My editor asked if I would be interested in covering the Supercross championship race in Vegas. I couldn’t say yes quick enough!
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After missing the race in Charlotte due to another shoot I was happy to get back on the circuit at Royal Purple Raceway near Houston, TX for my fourth NHRA race of the 2011 season. It would end up being an interesting race with two predictable pro winners and two surprises.
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The NHRA season always ends in Pomona, CA but it always conflicts with my NASCAR schedule as its always during the race weekend in my hometown of Phoenix. This year I decided a month in advance that I would be doing Pomona and skipping NASCAR. Keep reading and you will see that I made the right decision.
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Indy Car has the Indianapolis 500, NASCAR has the Daytona 500, but when it comes to NHRA the grand daddy of them all is the U.S. Nationals. With all the different sports I shoot it has gotten harder and harder for me to be able to fit NHRA in my schedule but when the race fell on an open weekend in my schedule I just had to shoot this race. Strap in, here we go!
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It has been a while since I last shot the 300mph cars of the NHRA so I decided that I had to hit up their annual visit to the wine country of Sonoma, CA. Flights and rental cars were rather expensive for the weekend so I decided to make it a road trip and drive up to the San Francisco area. Lets get on to the racing.
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Next up in my recap of 2009 is my Best of Drag Racing photos. As most of you probably know I basically grew up at drag strips as I followed my father, Gil Rebilas, to tracks around the country shooting drag racing. Perhaps thats why its my favorite sport to cover. Regardless, I present to you some of my favorites from 2009!
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I have really been trying to make an effort to cover more NHRA this year so with nothing going on for the weekend I decided to make the trek up to Sonoma for the Fram Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway. I have been to this track several times to cover NASCAR but never for NHRA. I am very happy I went to the race because this is without a doubt one of my favorite tracks to shoot drag racing at.
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