Funny Car driver JR Todd knows the fast way down the dragstrip at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis, and he lives just a few miles from the fabled facility.
 
But he never experienced it quite like he did Tuesday, starting with discovering a 10-turn circuit staked out in the paved lot where the Kalitta Motorsports team parks his DHL Toyota Camry at NHRA races.
 
Todd had hosted Red Bull Global Rallycross driver Alex Keyes at the previous weekend’s Denso NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There he introduced the 19-year-old Dreyer & Reinbold racer to a blast of eardrum-splitting, nitromethane-laced 10,000-horsepower and the eye-popping sight of a race car zipping the length of more than three football fields in less than four seconds.
 
In a closed test session Tuesday, Keyes welcomed Todd to his world of action around a 10-turn staked-out course that required constant braking and shifting. (An actual Global Rallycross Lites course is a packed dirt or clay circuit that features moguls from which the 300-horsepower full-bodied cars launch into the air.)
 
"It gives you a new respect for what these guys do,” Todd said following the completion of the crossover event between the two WIX-sponsored racers. “You are shifting gears going all the way around the course. It is a lot of fun. It’s easy to go as fast as you can on the straightaways, but then you got to get on the brakes to get on the corners that are always coming up.”
 
Corners are something new for Todd, and his any drag-racing vehicle becomes airborne that constitutes a catastrophe. The entire sensory-overload phenomenon was new for Keyes, who confessed, “First off, I did not know that they ran on nitro, so I was crying a little bit. When the first car ran, I wasn’t looking. I was just kind of like talking and looking at the stands. And I jumped. I jumped pretty big.” 
 
Keyes, who will start his season April 29 at Memphis, drove Todd around the serpentine track Tuesday before turning over the wheel completely to Todd. The NHRA veteran made two three-lap segments and said he was completely blown away.
 
So was Keyes last weekend, literally. Toyota representative John Procida had warned him beforehand about the powerful, noisy, smelly, internal-organ-shaking sensations he would encounter, and said he was grateful: “Otherwise I would have been out there, saying, ‘Help! There’s something wrong with me! Medic!’”
 

However, Keyes said, "It was so sweet. You feel it through your chest, and it is definitely a cool experience. I have seen NHRA on TV and I know they are fast, but I didn’t realize how fast they actually are going. TV just does not do them justice. It’s still interesting to watch, but when you come here and you see it firsthand, you realize how crazy it is. If someone hasn’t seen it in person, they need to. To come here and feel it is something totally different.”
 
“Huge thanks to Alex and the WIX Filters team for having me out," Todd said.
 
By way of comparison Keyes said of Funny Cars, “At 1,000 feet, them going more than 300 is crazy. A Supercar in GRC has a turbocharged, four-cylinder engine. It goes from zero to 60 in about 1.9 seconds. These things [Funny Cars] blow it away. They go from zero to 300 in two seconds. Everything here is accelerated, times 100.”
 
Keyes said he was amazed that the entire Funny Car blast is done in less than four seconds. While his Rallycross car also has a standing-still start on a course that customarily features 10 turns, he said, “Within our first four seconds, we probably would make it to the first corner. With our cars, we have to slip the clutch. Otherwise they’ll stall. We don’t even have enough power to spin the wheels. It’s an all-wheel-drive car.” He said he’s confident that against Funny Cars, “we definitely would beat ‘em in the corners.”
 
He said tire pressure “is a big deal for us. We definitely run a lot higher pressure. If you took a corner with the amount of pressure they run in these cars, it’d be a little scary. You probably would fold the tire off the rim.”
 
It’s not likely Keyes will ditch Rallycross for NHRA drag racing. “I love so much what I’m doing. I think I’d be nervous about going 300 miles an hour,” he said. “Oh yeah – that’s fast. It’s pretty crazy. They get going quickly.”
 
However, he said, “This is something I can see myself being a fan of.”
 
Both he and Todd said they plan to attend each other's events this season.
 
The Global Rallycross series will make its debut at Indianapolis July 8-9. The NHRA’s Mello Yello Drag Racing Series will return there Labor Day weekend (August 30-September 4). The NHRA tour will resume in three weeks at Baytown, Texas with the Springnationals at Royal Purple Raceway.
 
Todd, who last August tried drifting with his Toyota at Evergreen Speedway near Seattle, will join Top Fuel teammate Troy Coughlin Jr. in an April 27 ride-swap venture at Charlotte Motor Speedway with NASCAR Camping World Truck Series drivers Christopher Bell, Noah Gragson, Ryan Truex, and Grant Enfinger. (Incidentally, all are competing in their first and second full-time seasons in their respective divisions.)