Over the holidaze, one of our JBA crew visited Don Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida. Nice to see one of San Diego’s very own represented there—an early drag car built and driven by Joaquin Arnett and the Bean Bandits. Many thanks to Carl for the pictoral walk through! For more info, go to www.garlits.com.

Lots of Corvettes and Mustangs at Coffee and Cars this morning at JBA Performance Center in Kearny Mesa. Throw in a DB7, a BMW Z3 coupe, an immaculate first-gen Lightning, a Monster Miata and there was plenty to talk about and look at while munching on donuts and sipping a hot cup of Joe. It may seem crazy to watch the sunrise on a Sunday when you could be sleeping in, but where else can you share stories about running Mach 2 in an F4, spinning twice on the same day running over 200 mph at Bonneville, drag racing a split window against a 413 Dodge, a stuck throttle in a turbo Porsche and much more. Big thanks to all who attend and make Coffee and Cars cool. See you Sunday January 9th!

If you’ve never been to a big-time NHRA drag race, throw it on your “bucket list”. Nothing like 8,000 hp top fuel dragsters and funny cars running side-by-side at 300 mph! Even way up in the stands you can feel the heat as they pass by. The sound is unbelievable…you’ve got to hear it to believe it. We cruised up to Pomona for the last event in the National Hot Rod Association’s 2010 season. Saturday isn’t as crowded and you get to see some runs after dark. One of the best races of the weekend was the last Funny Car race on Saturday…John Force defeated Matt Hagan in a really close showdown between number 2 (Force) and number 1 (Hagan) in season points. On Sunday, John Force won the season championship in Funny Car and then the event itself. Force was joined in the winner’s circle at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona by Antron Brown (Top Fuel), Shane Gray (Pro Stock), and Eddie Krawiec (Pro Stock Motorcycle). Larry Dixon, Greg Anderson and TE Tonglet clinched the season championships in Top Fuel, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle respectively. Check out the pictures for a look around in the pits, staging lanes and grand stands. And thank you Carl for the additional pix. -bt

JBA supports local drag racing by sponsoring Barona Drag Strip and RaceLegal. Last night, July 24, 2010, Barona hosted its Funny Car Summer 2010 show. It was a fun time and the crowd seemed to enjoy it, even if one of the funny cars did try to eat a crew member!  I’ll apologize in advance for the lame night-time photography….let’s just call it “special effects” and let it go at that. The pictures don’t tell the definitive story, just random shots. Chris Boyer was on the microphone, the ice cream truck was armed and dangerous and the weather was perfect. One stop at Sonic on the way home and we called it a night. See the pictures for more details. -bt