Drag racing is a high-tension sport. Even the smallest mistake while waiting for the Christmas Tree to hit green will put you to shame. None are more embarrassing than these ten videos that Jalopnik readers put together.
Welcome back to Answers of the Day — our daily Jalopnik feature where we take the best ten responses from the previous day's Question of the Day and shine it up to show off. It's by you and for you, the Jalopnik readers. Enjoy!
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Photo Credit: American Drag Racing League
10.) Flipping a bike is the least of our problems
Suggested By: MooseKnuckles
Why it's facepalm-worthy: Big bikes like to do wheelies. Flipping one isn't that bad. When the photographer gets freaked out by a flip and falls, crushing his camera that's worth a couple grand, and that's embarrassing.
9.) This is why you don't drag race a donk
Suggested By: Jeff Chabotte
Why it's facepalm-worthy: There are a lot of haters out there, but super-lifted, wildly impractical donks are cool. They're just not built for drag racing, as this driver quickly finds out when he snaps off his rear axle.
8.) Crashing a dragster up a road course
Suggested By: I Can be Stig?
Why it's facepalm-worthy: We love Rod Millen's annual Leadfoot Festival, where cars run up his driveway, the
greatest in the world. Some of the cars just aren't built to navigate the corners, like this dragster plowing straight off the road and into a ditch.
7.) Ferrari 458 hits reverse, then the owner gets bitter
Suggested By: Aaron Curry
Why it's facepalm-worthy: Grabbing reverse is a pretty common way to screw up at the strip. It's more embarrassing in a dual-clutch supercar than in your average drag racer. The most embarrassing moment, though, is that when we posted this video last August, the owner wrote in with absolutely no sense of humor about the whole situation.
As the driver of this 458, I would just like to say that all you people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day you have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that you had before you woke up today. You have the same personal problems you had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. So you can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about me not accomplishing my goal of completing a quarter mile properly. But you all got to get back to the real world at some point.
6.) Camaro tears its axle off
Suggested By: rawtoast
Why it's facepalm-worthy: There's more to a drag racer than a monster engine. Make sure your car is strong enough to handle the power, unlike this guy.
5.) The critical 1-2-1 shift
Suggested By: Turbowagon
Why it's facepalm-worthy: Counting is hard. You're supposed to go from first gear, to second gear and then to third, not back down to first. As you can see, it's not good for the car or the ego.
4.) Neon driver roasts his clutch, not his tires
Suggested By: Therage
Why it's facepalm-worthy: This guy thinks he's doing a burnout in his high-power front-drive Neon SRT4, but that's the clutch he's burning.
3.) Wrecking your car after the burnout, before the stage
Suggested By: LSXforYourSuperCar
Why it's facepalm-worthy: It takes some creativity to find a new place to wreck on a drag strip. Usually, people wreck their cars during the burnout, or when they're in the middle of the run. Wrecking out reversing back from your burnout is a new one.
2.) Losing it three times is a row
Suggested By: philiphilip
Why it's facepalm-worthy: This BMW E30 driver screws up his first race. That's fine, they give him a do-over. He makes the same mistake on the second run. That's bad, but then to screw up the third run in a row? Awful.
1.) Bugatti Veyron loses to a GT-R
Suggested By: claydos66
Why it's facepalm-worthy: So you spent something between one and two million dollars to be secure in the knowledge that no other car on the road is even remotely as fast as you are. Until you get trounced at the strip by a Nissan GT-R.