There was a time when a race car didn’t need to make a pass to command your attention. Fire a nitro-burning front-engine dragster, let it sit there pounding the ground, and pretty much everything else became background noise.
That sound, along with the smell, vibration and controlled violence that comes with it, returns to Famoso Dragstrip when Cacklefest takes over Saturday night during the California Hot Rod Reunion, Oct. 23-25. Nitro Revival will again supply the machinery and a reminder that some pieces of drag racing history are better heard than explained.
Cacklefest isn’t a static display with ropes around old race cars and signs explaining what they once did. These cars breathe again, burning nitromethane and making enough noise to remind everyone why Bakersfield became one of drag racing’s sacred pieces of real estate.
For those who lived through drag racing’s formative years, Cacklefest is a trip backward. For everyone who arrived later, it might be the closest they will ever get to understanding what standing beside one of these cars felt like when front-engine dragsters ruled the sport.
“These cars aren’t just pieces of history—they’re part of the history of the people who built them, raced them and followed them,” said Cindy Gibbs, who produces Nitro Revival, along with her father, Steve. “This sensory overload experience gives today’s fans a chance to feel what it was like when these legendary cars ruled the earth. A “museum in motion,” there’s nothing like it…it’s something you simply can’t experience anywhere else.”
Drag racing history was never quiet, and the cars that created much of it weren’t particularly interested in being polite. They were loud, dirty, temperamental and fueled by enough nitromethane to make your eyes water before the driver ever reached the starting line.
The California Hot Rod Reunion has long provided a gathering place for that history, but the connection between Bakersfield, Steve Gibbs and Nitro Revival runs deeper than parking vintage machinery for people to admire. Putting these cars back on nitro at Famoso gives them a voice again, and this particular bunch still has plenty to say.
The Reunion itself has been working its way back toward the ingredients that gave the event its identity. Famoso’s history, the racers who competed there and the machines they brought through the gates aren’t decorations around the event; they are the backbone of it.
Cacklefest puts all of it under fire.
The buildup is part of the deal, and there isn’t much need to manufacture drama when a collection of vintage nitro cars is waiting to be push-started. A few fire on the track before the others begin coming down the return road, one after another, just as dragsters were brought to life during the 1960s and early 1970s.
“The energy of Cacklefest…it builds,” Gibbs said. “We fire a few on track to start the spectacle…and then you hear them coming. One after another, being push-started down the return road, just like they did in the 60’s and early 70’s. The newer drag racing fan never got to witness this…well, we’re here to give it to them.”
There is no elapsed time to record and no win light to chase. Fire enough of these old nitro burners at once, and suddenly the calendar doesn’t mean much at Famoso.
That’s where Cacklefest separates itself from a field of beautifully restored old race cars sitting silently in the California sun. Anybody can look at a photograph and appreciate what one of these machines was; firing it on nitro provides a pretty good explanation of why people became hooked on them.
The experience also carries a connection to one of drag racing’s most recognizable voices. Gibbs invoked the late Steve Evans, whose ability to sell the experience of being at a drag race became nearly as memorable as many of the racers he interviewed.
“You just gotta “BE THERE,” as the late, great Steve Evans famously announced, Gibbs continued.
Evans’ old line fits because there are pieces of drag racing that come across the same way through photographs, television or a phone screen. You can see header flames and hear engines through speakers, but none of it delivers the concussion in your chest when a nitro engine cracks the throttle a few feet away.
A phone can’t reproduce the smell, either. Anyone who has spent enough time around nitromethane knows there is no mistaking it, particularly when several engines are running at once and the stuff begins hanging over the racetrack.
The California Hot Rod Reunion will surround Cacklefest with three days of drag racing, along with a vendor row, swap meet and car show. Saturday at sunset, however, Nitro Revival turns the Famoso Quarter Mile over to machinery from another era.
The racers who originally drove these cars were chasing trophies, records and one another. Nobody was thinking about preserving history when the cars were being pushed down return roads, fired and sent toward the starting line.
Time changed their approach, but it didn’t change why people still want to stand next to one. Cacklefest gives a generation that missed those days a chance to get close enough to understand why these cars have never really loosened their grip on drag racing.
There is plenty of drag racing history that can be read about, watched on an old film or parked behind a velvet rope. Cacklefest takes a decidedly less civilized approach. It pours nitro in the tank and fires it up.
“The air is thick with the sweet smell of nitromethane…there’s nothing like it,” Gibbs said. “I’ve got goosebumps just thinking about it, right now!”
