You are behind the wheel of a 6000 horsepower, G smacking, adrenaline pumping, nitro fuel burning, earth shaking fuelie. Your blood pressure rises as you get ready to stomp your foot on the loud pedal. Prepare to hold on, as the horses get loose and you might be shoved into another dimension. As you move your fuelie up to the lane to get staged, your thoughts seem to question as to whether or not. "Do you have enough for the other guy in the other lane? What if something happens during the run? Do you hope you can make to the next event or round? Why am I doing this?"

The lights trickle down, you start to sweat, your nerves are rattling. Stop being a "knee knocker!" You slam the "pedal to the medal", 5Gs throw you hard in the seat. Blood rushes to the back of your body. Your sight is only focus on what's ahead, a small little portal of a clear view at the end of the strip, "tunnel vision". Everything is blurred as you roar down the track. The rearend of the car begins to wander as the massive slicks pray for adhesion to the tarmac. You apply the correct amount of opposite lock. The finish line is here. PULL the lever for the parachute and "pump them brakes". As the car slows, your mind screams, "let's do that again". What a rush!
NHRA Drag Racing is a drag racing simulation based on the Top Fuel and Funny Cars in the, you guess it, the NHRA. The sim gives you the opportunity to race against the actual drivers that do this for a living in the NHRA. Drivers like Ron Capps, Jim Head, John Force, Joe Amato, Eddie Hill to name a few.

You can see there was a large amount of research involved in making this simulation. Take into account the real life settings available in the pits or garage. The parameters are adjusted by the crew chief. The speeds are very close to what they run in real life, especially in the Funny Car class. The sensation of speed is very evident. I must say you really get a rush when doing a run either in a dragster or funny car.


PHYSICS

The game is precisely modeled on the scope of the "realistic and normal tune ups" that the crew chiefs decide in each class. There are settings for; "Primary Clutch, Seconday Clutch, Blower Overdrive, Cylinder Pressure, Advance Spark, Nitro Content, Nose Weight and Wing Attack." Though the Wing Attack option is only done in the Top Fuel Dragster.

It's imperative that you save your "killer" setup, as the designer of the game went to the trouble of setting up measurements for the settings. Meaning, in real life manufacturing, there are tolerances allowed. For example, when you move the sliders up or down in the setup screen, you will notice there's allot of "play" for the adjustment to move up one number. I really like how NHRA DR simulates this. This really adds another "plus" to a simulation. Man, what detail!

If I really lost you, let me show you what I mean. Let's say you set the Primary Clutch to 120grams, yet when you move the slider up to add more grams, it seems it takes a bit to get it to move up one gram. So with that in mind, I am assuming there are variances in "tenths". Like 119.1-119.9 grams. The Nose Weight setting are also in grams, so take that into account. It may seem that it wouldn't matter, yet in real drag racing, everything matters, since hundredths or even thousandths can be the difference between "winning or losing" a round.

With that in mind, think about the other variables. The Secondary Clutch is adjusted by the time it engages. So if the variables given are in seconds and tenths, there must be "hundredths" hidden. Blower Overdrive and Nitro are in percentages, so take in account "tenths of a percent."

How is driving depicted in the game? Though, drag racing is just straightline acceleration, you would think it would be really that simple. It's really not. You have to keep the car in the lane and in the groove. And the cars are basically overpowering the track. I really don't think you can lay down 6000HP and not leave any tires marks on the asphalt. In real life, they "haze" the tires.

The model of the clutches as they engage is excellent. It's great to see when you have a maladjusted clutch, you can tell which one it is. Either by the timeslip, tireshake, or wheelspin.

You really have to be delicated with the wheel. As you can send the car to the wall, pass the centerline or roll it.

The tires breaking loose during the racing on the track is remarkably done. You see the outside environment, begin to slow down, which adds time to your ET. You can sense the rearend begin to walk side to side. So you better control the car! If you have played with the Nose Weight setting, watch for frontend lift! Use the throttle to control it.

In my experience in the game, I have seen, dragsters flipping over, rolls and I mean rolls. Also, there great modeling of damage, if you don't slow down fast enough and hit the sand trap at the end of the dragstrip. Let me give you a word of advice, the Funny Cars are harder to drive! Remember, you have to start the engine!

As for elasped time, the Funny Cars are pretty much on par on the times they run in real life. But, the Top Fuel Dragster seems to be a bit fast for the player. Don't get me wrong, the AI in the Top Fuel class does run times close to the real guys, yet the player can beat them by at least two tenths. In otherwords, you can win more easily in Top Fuel than in Funny Car. There is a patch coming before Christmas to fix this. You know what's also neat about this sim? Some of the actual NHRA drivers use this sim between rounds! Wooweee!!


GAMEPLAY

NHRA Drag Racing give you several ways of racing. First, you have to decide what class you would like to race in. The next menu presents, driver's skill level to race in, what type of racing, what track to race on, and how many eliminations.

Driver's skill level breakdown:

Novice*: This level "stages" your car automatically and the "easiest" to drive.
Arcade*: In this option, you do all the driving, burnouts, staging and slowdowns. Basically, more driving.
Full: This is the top level. The player tunes the car via the pits and does all the driving.

*NOTE: On these two levels, you are given a "crew chief." So choose wisely.

Type of racing:

Testing: Just what it implies, you can test at any track.
Match: The player can pick any driver he wants to race against in the same class he/she participates in.
Single: The player can do a single round.
Season: Simulates a season on a points system. There is also money or earnings. When the player first starts out, he already has money from the sponsors. Points and earnings are based upon qualifying and finishing position at an event. Be careful, not to damage your car, it's going to cost you. Also, you can damage wheels, engines, etc..

It's important to have some money to make it to the next event, if you don't, you are not going to make it in.

Eliminations:

Single: You lose "one" round, pack your bags, it's time to go home.
Double: You can lose "twice" then back your bags.
Triple: Are you getting the picture? Three times a charm, you should be able to win a championship, if it's set here!

Whatever type of racing you chose, all the tracks have their own characteristics as they do in real life. That's some great time and devotion to get the tracks properly configured. And let me tell you, the western tracks are a bit too configured! Talk about keeping on your toes! Also pay attention to the weather, it changes from round to round.


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

NHRA Drag Racing's AI have their own personalities. You have some that do bonzai burnouts, exceptional reaction times, and of course, fast lap times. There are some AI that are very consistant on their reactions and some that aren't. In my experience, I didn't notice the AI having allot of problems. I just hope this gets fixed in the patch. But they are very competitive! There was on championship I was running for, the points spread for the top three guys were 77 points..


GRAPHICS

NHRA Drag Racing is based upon Direct 3D. And I might add, the sim looks beautiful. There are several levels of resolution to chose from; low, medium, high, and AGP. Of course, the higher level the resolution, the better the game looks. I play the game on a AGP TNT chipset on the AGP option. There is a "incar view". Watch it shake!

There are various cameras the player can mess with, especially in the replay option. I found a camera view of the cockpit looking at the driver, all I can say is, "WOW!". I have never saw this in a sim. When they animate the driver. Lots of detailing in graphics. The smokes, the flames out of the headers. Talk about "eyecandy" heaven!!

It's neat to see the time of day change as you go through the rounds. Don't be surprised when you see night in the final round. A word about 3Dfx owners. I have tested the Voodoo1 and Voodoo2. For the Voodoo1 owners, you can go in "low" resolution, since this card doesn't have enough memory. But the game still looks good in this mode. For Voodoo2 owners, you can chose "medium or high" resolution, though some people I have spoken to, couldn't get it to run on "high". There is a GLIDE patch in the works! Should be coming after the first patch.


SOUND

The engine sound was sampled from a real clip of a nitro burning engine. At high volumes it tends to clip my speakers. I do notice that it loops. The other sounds in the sim I didn't have a problem with.


CONTROLS

The game works fine with keyboard, joystick, gamepad and a steering wheel. You can't use pedals as of yet. And yes, that same patch will out to fix this. There are options for you to change the threshold of your control device. I just play the sim with wheel and buttons.


BOTTOMLINE

Though with some "longer than normal" load times, NHRA Drag Racing for a first version, it's a great start. This has allot of potentional going for it. We hear Tantrum are working with several groups to make "NHRA Drag Racing to NHRA-Online"! For any drag racing fan, this sim is well worth it.