Nothing brings the spring back into your step like a trip to the drag strip. Here's the drag racing experience according to me.

The basic premise
Drag racing involves one or two cars burning up a quarter mile track in as little time as possible (kind of, there's also a thing called bracket racing where drivers have to estimate the time it'll take them to do the run). The fastest ones are in the 300 miles per hour range and it takes seconds to run the track.

Categories
There are millions of categories of car and motorbike in drag racing. I can't begin to get my head around all of them, but they involve things like style of car, engine type and fuel type. You see quite a lot of Funny Cars at the drag strip, these are cars that look moderately related to street vehicles but which have super-charged engines.

Top Fuel Dragsters
My favourite cars are the top fuel dragsters. This probably marks me out as a complete div, like saying my favourite band is Radiohead or U2 or something. It's obvious and unimaginative but what can I do? I like what I like. Top fuel dragsters have the classic long dragster shape, big fat wheels at the back and little bicycle wheels at the front. These fuckers can MOVE. They look predatory, like wolves, they are extremely loud. It feels like a holy experience when a pair of them obliterate the track in a five-second run right in front of your very eyes. In Britain you're unlikely to come across more than about ten top fuel dragsters in one place, even at a big meet, and their rarity makes them all the more special. They are really expensive to run, it costs a couple of grand just to get them up the track once, and they are the hulking behemoths of the scene. But to me they are cars of the gods; the loudest, fastest, best-looking cars in the world.

Nitro
This is the secret ingredient that makes top fuel dragsters shoot up the track at rocket-like speeds. It's the champagne of fuel, or maybe the cocaine.

Santa Pod Raceway
The Pod, a run-down racetrack not far from Northampton, is the best place in the UK to watch drag racing. A day ticket costs about £25, although you can buy weekend passes and camp on the site if you're really dedicated. Races start at 10am and end in the early evening, depending on the weather. You can pay an extra fiver and sit in the grandstand, but most people sit on the grassy banks on the other side of the track. There are places to buy hog roast plus other nasty fast food concessions, and at big events there are a few fairground rides, maybe a Wall of Death, some dodgems, helicopter rides. I'm guessing that there are after-hours parties too but, wuss that I am, I've never stayed that late into the night to find out.

Viewing positions
One of the most prized places to be is right behind the track, in what looks like a cowshed. You get to see the drivers do their burn-outs (when they spin their back wheels in a patch of greasy water in order to heat up the tyres and get a better grip when they accelerate at the start of the race) and then zoom off. It's deafening, fume-filled, dirty and foul - no wonder everybody loves it. Unlike other kinds of motor racing, the quarter mile track means that you can see the whole race from start to finish, there's no cars disappearing around bends, it's all there right in front of you. At Santa Pod you can stand where you like: at the beginning, at the end, or somewhere between. It makes you feel very close to the noise and acceleration, it feels great.

The pits
All the drivers, the cars and their support teams are located in the pit area. They're usually busy tuning up their cars for the next race, but if things are slack it's no big deal to go and say hi. Some drivers sell t-shirts and old bits of engine. It's a fangirl's paradise. Drag racing is not a sport for individuals. Success depends on a combination of luck, driver's skill, bravery and aptitude, fuel and car quality. Sure, at the lower end you can do it as a hobby, but the closer to top fuel you get, the more you're going to need sponsorship and a team of mechanics to support you. After a particularly good run you get to see the team scooting up the side of the track to fetch the car and the driver, pack up the brake parachute, and bring it all back to the pits in time to strip down the car, replace anything that broke under the stress of going so fast, and get it ready for the next time.

Commentary
At the Pod, the dad-style commentators sit in a decrepit bridge over the start of the track. They can talk without stopping for hours. They sound like Dave Lee Travis, the Hairy Cornflake. They have levels of drag racing knowledge that are very deep and arcane. They are kings of the nerds.

The punters
Drag racing is a hipster-free zone.

Danger
In the olden days the driver sat behind the dragster engine. Some of them had their legs blown off. Things are a little safer nowadays but the last time I went to the drag strip we saw a top fuel dragster explode in flames at a couple of hundred miles an hour halfway along the track. No one was hurt but the fact that people might get seriously injured whilst doing this is a) the big taboo and b) one of the main reasons that we're all there. Meanwhile the commentators chattered on, downplaying the fact that the driver might have been torched, keeping things light, keeping everything going.

Junior dragsters and the jet car
The slowest and the fastest. The luckiest kids in the world drive junior dragsters. They go at about 40mph and have paintwork that spells out things like The Bubblegum Kid or Rolling Thunder. These are the cars that I would drive if I was ten years old. At the other end of the scale is the jet car, one of two in the country. It's a novelty, basically a bona fide jet engine with a bit of car built around it, and it vies with top fuel dragsters for my affections. The owners haul it out onto the strip at various meetings, wind it up and let it go because where else are they going to be able to drive this thing? It does a quarter mile in four or five seconds. You will never have never seen or felt anything so fast in your life.

So what's not to like?
Drag racing occupies the same pleasure stratum as dancing wildly to rock and roll, having a weird but hot new sexual experience, committing a minor crime, or taking Class As. It's barely controlled mayhem on wheels. The noise (like a drumroll combined with a really loud explosive fart), the smell, the speed and the spectacle are intoxicating and euphoric, it massacres your mind. Drag racing is total entertainment, a celebration of the crass, unnatural pinnacle of human achievement - really fucking fast cars. Yes, it attracts insane levels of nerdery, people for whom technical knowledge is a lifestyle choice, but you don't have to be intimidated by engine specifics or rev counts. Just pull on your Hoosier t-shirt and come on down for the next meet.

*This is a line from Big Stick's brain-melting track 'Drag Racing'.

Read my interview with Jungle Pam, one of the legends of drag racing

Visit Santa Pod, innit!