ROCKINGHAM — The need for speed is inherent within a great many of us, certainly within those participating this week in the racing portion of Rockingham Dragway’s annual Super Chevy Show presented by Richmond County Tourism.
The event includes a bow tie-themed car and truck show awarding gold cups to entries deemed “exceptional” while also presenting 25 class winner awards, 25 “outstanding” awards, 12 specialty awards and 13 “best in category” awards including the highly-prized “Best of Show” designation.
There’s a car corral, a swap meet and a manufacturers’ midway plus a host of specialty food and souvenir vendors, but most of those who pay the $25 admission will be there to experience the surreal sight, sound and speed of the Larsen Motorsports jet dragsters. The jets will race Saturday only at 12 noon and 3 p.m.
There will be racing on both Saturday and Sunday in Top ET, Footbrake and Trophy classes and there will be Saturday qualifying for a Sunday race in the DOT class but nothing in traditional drag racing, not even a Top Fuel dragster, can prepare a neophyte for the jet car experience.
Think about it. Who in his right mind would look at something like an F4 Phantom jet fighter and think, “man, I bet if we cut the wings off this thing and got rid of some of the dead weight, this’d make one helluva race car.”
Well, a guy named Art Arfons had that thought back in the fifties when he created the first in a long series of “Green Monster” jet dragsters that pursued land speed records on the Utah salt flats and purse money racing against Top Fuel dragsters on the American Hot Rod Association and International Hot Rod Association circuits.
As for the two 300 mile per hour hybrids that headline Super Chevy, they represent the very latest in jet car technology.
“The Dominator” is driven by Marine Corps veteran Dewayne Hill, whose day job is working for NASA at Cape Canaveral, just up the road from the team’s headquarters in Palm Bay, Fla. The Florida Tech dragster is driven by Elaine Larsen, who owns the distinction of being the only jet dragster world champion the sport has ever crowned.
Co-owner of Larsen Motorsports with husband Chris, the 54-year-old native of Michigan won the IHRA Jet Dragster championship in 2014 and 2015, the last two years the IHRA ran a professional racing series and the only time a sanction has raced jets in stand-alone category.
Originally created as a racing team, Larsen Motorsports in the last 10 years has become so much more. Housed in a 30,000 square foot complex in the heart of Florida’s space corridor, it has evolved into a high-performance vehicle development and research center with ties to major players in the aircraft and aerospace industries.
Significantly, 80 percent of the company’s employees are high school and college students involved in various STEM programs who spend all their free time making sure that every ride made by Larsen and Hill is both swift and safe.
Saturday tickets for the Super Chevy Show are $25 for adults, $5 for kids 6-12. Kids under six are free with a ticketed adult.