Driving an NHRA Pro Stock Car is Harder Than it Looks, Learn How With Alex Laughlin

When it comes to drag racing on a high level, very few actually understand everything that’s going on. To the untrained eye, drag racing can look incredibly easy. After all, the driver doesn’t even have to turn in order to get to the finish line. To those who have never done it before, it could look like a simple combination. It may look like stabbing the throttle and keeping the car in a straight line are the extent of the challenge.

Obviously, those two aspects are incredibly important to the finished product. However, there’s a lot more that goes into it than that. In fact, as cars get faster, we would also argue that driving them will introduce an all-new level of difficulty. Drivers must encompass a whole variety of traits in order to remain competitive. These traits include but aren’t limited to focus, drive, and a heck of reaction time.

This time, pro driver, Alex Laughlin, gives us the rundown on how exactly it’s done with an NHRA Pro Stock machine. From staging the car all the way to the finish line, there are about a million things that Alex needs to remember. He relays to us that, on every pass, he has to be just about perfect in order to try and take home a win.

At the end of the day, having the faster setup isn’t going to guarantee victory. Sometimes, it all comes down to which driver can hit their marks the best. After all, most of these cars are going to be within hundredths of a second of one another.

No pressure, right?

After following along with the video below, we get a hunch that most will gain an all-new appreciation for what’s going on in the cockpit of one of these monsters. As it turns out, the process is a lot more than meets the eye.