Sometimes, you just want to put the hammer down and see how brutally fast you can go. Say, 300 MPH kind of fast. For that reason, Pirelli World Challenge racer and race team co-owner Shea Holbrook is looking to hop over into a jet dragster, and that couldn't be more awesome.
Sure, it takes a lot of talent to figure out a road course on the fly, get a sequence of corners just right and tie it all together into a stonking fast lap. That rarely makes you giggle in quite the same way that pure, raw speed does, though. We fall in love with the Hellcats of the world not for their handling prowess or other reasons rooted in track dorkery, but for the giddy feeling you get when you drop a gear and floor it. Yes—giddy.
Hoon all the things in all ways possible, I say. If you pretend to be a racing fan and skip over drags and land speed runs because "pah, it's just straight line stuff," I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.
Shea Holbrook has become a dominant force in World Challenge's TCA class, placing second this year. What better time to try something completely different?
Problem is, the licensing and gear for a completely different style of racing are pretty costly, especially at the upper levels where a jet dragster would run.
Enter yet another motorsports-related crowdfunding campaign. We've seen it all this year: attempts to revive old names, to keep current teams in business, and to build cool track day gadgets, for example.
Shoot, even I pitched a parody crowdfunding campaign to Hardibro for Der Porschelump to keep with our LeMons car's theme of mocking actual professional race teams (err, and lessen the effects of my newfound unemployment on THE RACE CAR!!!1!), only to have him come back with "no, no, here's a motorsports sub-blog; knock yourself out."
We've entered an era where starting a crowdfunding campaign is the de facto means of panhandling for tech industry rejects and refugees, yet there's still cool stuff that sneaks through the potato-salad-filled cracks.
Cool stuff like strapping yourself to a jet engine with wheels and going as fast as possible. Yeah, that.
Shea's campaign is up on Dark Horse Pros and runs until December 3. What makes this one in particular more interesting than the many, many others out there is that she's offered up drives in her World Challenge Civic and Pro Mazda Road to Indy cars as perks for some of the higher donor levels.
That's right: if you've ever wanted to drive a race car, particularly with a pro driver around to coach you in said race car, here's your chance. The $1,500 for the Civic donor perk actually isn't a bad price considering what race car rentals and race coaching go for nowadays.
Most of all, She of the Steel Ovaries looks to be having fun. I'll be honest: I don't always root for the best drivers. I want the ones who look like they're enjoying themselves to win. The huge grin in the video above when the jets fire up says it all.
If the fund-it-or-lose-it-style campaign reaches full funding, Holbrook plans to run a Larsen Motorsports jet dragster in 2015 in addition to the usual Pirelli World Challenge races. The jet dragster is already under construction, so it's really the licensing and gear that needs to be funded.
That sounds like the perfect season: hopping back and forth between a car known for insane speed and another that handles well on a road course. Maybe she'll grab first in PWC next year, too.