After lots of football and basketball during the NHRA off season, I was more than happy to be heading to Pomona to kick off the 2012 season. Lots of new drivers, teams, paint jobs and for me clients had me super stoked for the season to begin.
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With the NHRA circuit down to just three races remaining, the Arizona Nationals near Phoenix would make our break the championship hopes of several professional drivers. While temperatures would exceed 100 degrees all weekend at Firebird International Raceway making for a miserable time shooting and getting down the track for drivers, it was still 20 minutes from my place so I would get to sleep in my own bed every night.
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The last time I shot a drag race at Bristol was in 1991 when I was an 11 year old punk kid with an old Nikon FM2 film camera. My father Gil would put me on top of a motorhome near the finish line and only instruct me to push the button if I saw a crash or a fire. Well the last time I was here it was for an IHRA drag race and funny car driver Richard Hartman would have a big fire in front of me. I shot a sequence of the whole thing only to find out when I handed my dad the camera to take the film out that he had forgotten to load the film for me. I was devastated and am pretty sure I cried when I found out. Well fast forward 20 years and check out my return to Thunder Valley!
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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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Typically on this weekend every year I venture to Dover, Delaware to shoot NASCAR but after three consecutive years shooting that event I felt it was time for a change so I decided to head to Topeka, Kansas to cover the ground pounding 320mph vehicles of the NHRA.
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