Originally Posted By: Rhymingmechanic
That guy is having a lot of fun--and he spanks almost everybody at the light. About the only car that launches with him is the old black Firebird with slicks, but then it can't keep up. The other drivers are either asleep at the light or can't get their cars to launch and hook up. Some of the newer hot rods start chasing him down once they get underway, but there's just not enough track left by then.
I just got around to watching the video, and you made the same observation I did. Not to discredit the performance of the truck- it is impressive- but the driver gets huge props because he totally "treed" the Hellcat, ZL-1, and even the Camaro SS, and that's what won those races (if he beat the Hellcat, it was passing him so fast I couldn't tell for sure if it was before or after the finish line). Winning at the starting end of the track gets magnified more than any advantage at the big end, which is why launches are so important and you can't always just run away with massive horsepower (though again, the Hellcat came darn close).
And its interesting that running a truck like that is so much fun nowdays, because back in the old days you'd often have someone that would show up with a large barge luxury car (often an Imperial with the same drivetrain as a GTX or Coronet R/T except for gear ratio) that hooked up so well and ran so consistently that it would make it through several rounds against faster muscle cars. Kinda the same game, muscle cars and their drivers then and now are often really good at beating themselves by overpowering the starting line, or else "walking it out" too gently to avoid going up in tire smoke. With a turbo truck or an old luxury car with a taller rear gear, the launch is a lot more controllable and there's not such a knife-edge between too soft and too aggressive.
People who put down drag racing as "just stepping on the gas and hanging on" are missing a whole lot of subtlety that's needed to be really competitive.