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Speed Isn't Enough

Continued from page 3

NASCAR's still "redneck racin'" at its root, shaped by the good ol' boys who love to see those Confederate flags flying in the stands. It started in the Southeast in the 1930s, when moonshine runners, whiskey-trippers, tried to elude federal and state revenuers on winding roads. But drag's a simple impulse, a way to settle the age-old question of whose car goes faster, and it's influenced by just about everybody. McAmis has won trophies in Puerto Rico, and he's built cars for racers from Sweden, England, Australia and Canada.

The car glides to a stop in a long line. He rubs his dark-blue eyes, stinging from the nitromethane the funny cars have just plumed into the air. When it's dark, they'll look like moving torches, their headers shooting orange flames into the blackness. The heat of the exhaust actually sets the excess fuel on fire.

He stares straight ahead, eyes crinkled, mind as still as a Zen monk's.

The roar of the engines does not suggest lions. Purely mechanical, akin to nothing in nature, it fills the air, shakes the ground, fills the chest of every human at the rail. People wince happily, clap their hands over their ears, smile like saints during a vision. The sound is superhuman, its power transcendent.

But the rhythm of the revving is primal, cresting in the body like lust or rage.

McAmis hears this without hearing it. Anticipation calms him. He'll do the burnout in the usual blur, his mind leaping ahead of habit to reckon with the only six seconds that matter.

The Sanders brothers strap him into his five-point harness, hook the air line to his helmet, tug the belt tight. McAmis slides his foot under the metal that holds it in place above the accelerator, locking in, glad he can pry up on the metal if the pedal gets stuck.

He likes safety. Most drag racers die of natural causes, he regularly reminds his wife and mother.

February scared them.

He'd gone alone, sick with the flu, to run tests in Darlington, South Carolina. Got in at 1 a.m., up at 5 a.m. Dosed himself good with Tylenol; no food since noon the day before. Strapped in, took off -- and lost consciousness.

He woke up in a field of cows.

All this flashes in a millisecond as he watches workers powder the bald spot at the starting line, rubber torn away by launch after launch. He takes better care of himself now; he's stopped guzzling Sun-Drop citrus soda and eating miniature Milky Ways for lunch.

Time is erasing his immortality.

The starter points. He cranks the engine, goes through the burnout and takes off, wrapping his gloved fingers tight around the steering wheel.

Pro-mod are the most violent cars on the dragstrip -- as a friend of his put it, "The ass end of the car is literally trying to eat the front end." Funny-car champ John Force cringes at the thought of driving one of these babies. But McAmis won't drive anything else.

He fights to hold the car steady at maximum speed.

He qualifies again, finishing in 6.374 seconds, but drops to sixth position.

Early Saturday morning, and already a long line of cars creeps along Gateway's outer road looking for parking, the chug-and-brake rhythm an ironic contrast to the 300 mph dragsters they've come to watch. Gateway's managers searched so desperately for more parking space, they got their hands slapped by the Illinois Supreme Court: OK, the place is the economic hope of Madison County, but that doesn't mean it's in the public interest to turn over land to them.

Now Gateway's color-coding lots and running shuttles, engineering ingress every way its staff can think of.

McAmis and his crew keep it simple: They sleep here. They've been running tests since sunup.

Heat's already rising from the asphalt, and the air's wavy as old glass. Mike plays around with the temperature gauge, comparing the white and silver and black vehicles parked across from their trailer.

By early afternoon, the black one will be 158 degrees Fahrenheit, and the thermometer hanging on the shady side of the trailer will read 99.

Today, they don't bother setting a chair in front of the fan. Nobody's going to have time to sit in it.

The morning's debate: what size fuel jets to use. The air hangs heavy with humidity, so they need the right balance of air to fuel. Run it too rich, and they won't have optimum performance. Lean is mean. But if they go too lean, they'll blow their cylinders.

McAmis weighs every opinion. Running a shop has taught him to listen.

Around 10 a.m., Diane carries Snoozer, the elder of the couple's two schnauzers, out of the motor home for a break, then returns him and comes out with Pebbles, the puppy. As they pass Mike, Pebbles reaches up and licks his cheek. She's incorrigible, compared with the dignified and perfect 11-year-old Snoozer, and Diane complains that she has to be the disciplinarian:

"She don't get no swats from Tim."

He's more likely to button her into her life vest, knowing she's too much of a prima donna to swim in their lake. The McAmises don't have kids. But they do have schnauzers.

Mike returns to the compressor, but Pebbles' visit has smoothed the frown lines from his forehead. He and Chris gab a minute about oval-track racing -- who wants to make left turns all day? -- and how there's more luck involved than skill, because you've got all that time to recover your position. Drag racing, you control as much as you can, do whatever you have to do to stay in front. And you either make it or you don't.

Mike goes to the big purple drum inside the trailer, siphons out Mach Series Racing Methanol. This car turns normal mileage upside down, drinking about 28 gallons per mile. They use a giant double funnel and pour slowly; it splashes anyway.

"These are the exhaust headers," he tells a bystander, pointing to what look like fat, dirty organ pipes. "You wouldn't want to try to get this emissions-inspected."

McAmis climbs into the driver's seat, and, one by one, the crew members pop in their orange earplugs. He revs the engine, but steadily, not for effect. Voom, voom, voom. Then he builds to a crescendo so they can check the timing.

Afterward, he rolls his neck, but just once. He doesn't want to make a production of it. Everybody's tense; everybody's working hard.

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