WHO'S AFRAID OF ARLEY LANGLO?
by Cole Coonce
Despite the inevitable encroachment of Corporate America into a once
idiosyncratic sport, one man still burns the torch of individualism in
contemporary Top Fuel drag racing.
In the nether regions of the Pomona Fairplex (home of the NHRA World
Finals), far beyond the cozy confines where the Fortune 500 park their
18-wheelers, one could find the seemingly innocuous, inconspicuous
Arley Langlo, Jay Roach, and their "Titan Xpress" race team in their
pit area.
A ramshackle trailer, a 10-year old short (260-inch wheelbase) Top
Fueler, an anti-matter black 1967 Dodge camper, and a race crew whose
uniform consists of straw cowboy hats and stark white coffee-stained
T-shirts, are the elements which define their existence, at least
tangibly. Dwarfed by a phalanx of massive transporters, race teams with
matching polyester uniforms, not to mention the copious "store-bought"
(Arley's words) spare parts, all of which are de rigueur for modern day
multi-million dollar operations, Langlo, Roach, and cohorts looked like
they made a wrong turn on Fairplex Avenue in 1984, got lost in the
Mojave Desert, mistakenly entered the vortex of the Twilight Zone,
blinked, and somehow wandered back into Pomona, only to find ten years
had elapsed. It was now 1994 , but somehow the mayonnaise and the
baloney in their Styrofoam cooler had not spoiled. In reality, no
matter how anachronistic these guys are, their presence at the Winston
Finals could not be ignored, nor swept under the carpet.
Sure, a lot of the hullabaloo was focused on the culmination of Don
Prudhomme's "Final Strike" tour, Shelly Anderson's dramatic 4.71 Low
ET, and Kenny Bernstein's shocking 314 mph blast. I maintain that all
this was anti-climactic, however, compared to the incendiary,
apocalyptic exploits of the "Titan Xpress" bunch. Indeed, amongst Arley
Langlo's attempts to "qualify" into Top Fuel Eliminator at Pomona were
a pair of the most curious, surreal meltdowns ever perpetrated on the
ol' 1320.
Langlo and Roach probably had no hope of "getting into the show against
these store-bought dragsters," as Arley put it, but the World Finals
did provide for them an excuse to "test the new fuel pump." (This fuel
pump, like virtually every piece of kit on their dragster, is homemade
by Jay Roach in his hard to find J&S East Valley Garage,
reclusively nestled in the hills of Santa Barbara County.) At the end
of the weekend, whether the new fuel pump worked satisfactorily or not
seemed entirely beside the point; although a point was made by the
"Titan Xpress" at the NHRA Finals. What that point was, however, is
subject to serious interpretation...
During Top Fuel qualifying on Thursday and Saturday, Langlo
demonstrated some genuine human characteristics that are conspicuously
absent from modern Top Fuel racing-specifically driving skills, i.e.,
how the driver responds to the nuances of an unrestrained technology
gone gloriously amok. Traditionally, that was the drama of Top Fuel: it
is about man and machine and their relationship to each other.
Unfortunately, it is an increasingly rare occurrence for us, the
gearheads and the punters, to feel overwhelmed or inspired by the
exploits of the driver; when Bernstein goes 314, when Shelly runs 4.71,
when the Don "the Snake" Prudhomme feebly breaks traction and spins the
tires on his "final strike," these runs were about the dynamics of
technology-the drivers were merely passive. Anderson's clutch
management system had been programed brilliantly. Prudhomme's, on the
other hand, had been set up erroneously-therefore the car overpowered
the drag strip, the tires smoked ferociously but momentarily, and
fluids puked out of the cylinder heads feverishly as the car shut
itself off. That was it: dragster interruptus. Having been emasculated,
Prudhomme limped impotently down the drag strip, naked and vulnerable.
The shame of this "not with a bang but a whimper" finale however was
the onus of Prudhomme's crewchief, the esteemed savant Wes Cerny, not
the "Snake" himself. Likewise, the bravado and chutzpah requisite of a
314 mile-per-hour salvo is the machinations of "Budweiser King"
crew-chief Dale Armstrong, not driver Kenny Bernstein who merely
stomped on the go-faster, hung on, and then dumped the laundry before
he ran out of real estate. Lowly Arley Langlo, however, laid down the
gauntlet: this time, just once, it's gonna be about the driver.
On Thursday Arley fired what could only be interpreted as the first of
two salvos of civil defiance: It started innocently enough with a nice
smoky burnout-so far, so what. He gingerly and methodically staged the
car, just another of 30 Top Fuel cars trying to qualify for Sunday's
eliminations. As soon as the light goes green and he drops the hammer
however something goes very wrong: the car lurches spastically, the
sound of the motor changes pitch in an ill glissando, and a ball of
flame the size of the Manhattan Project shoots out the back of the race
car, scorching a big chunk of Parker Avenue. This is all within the
first 60 feet of the run.
Arley feels the car nose over; he should shut 'er off, right? He should
abort the run-something is amiss-cut his losses, see 'ya tomorrow, Mr.
Amato. But au contraire and let the pyrotechnics begin. Arley kept the
throttle nailed, even though the head gaskets hydraulicked as soon as
he swapped pedals, allowing the billowing fuel and oil to feed an
inferno that ballooned into a 30-foot mushroom cloud by half-track.
Langlo stubbornly refused to void the run (even though he later
acknowledged "it was a little on the rich side"), and he stopped the
timers at 5.65 seconds-not bad for an experiment gone horribly awry-but
the hijinks continue because this massive fireball burned off his
parachutes. The ticket-holders are shaking their heads in disbelief,
trying to come to terms with what they are witnessing, but ol' Arley
methodically rides the hand brake, milking what is left out of the
hydraulic brake fluid that has not been boiled to molasses by the
inferno-he does not engage the clutch lest the car pick up more
velocity, preferring instead to let the torque of the motor slow the
car down. The car slows under power, and Langlo swerves to avoid the
catch net while wrestling the slightly yo-yoing fueler onto the border
of the Fairplex parking lot. O-kay...
Come Friday the fuel pump is still "too rich." No boom-boom this time,
and the car leaves hard, but Mr. Langlo shuts it off at half-track as
it starts dropping cylinders, the hyperactive fuel pump frothing so
voluminously that the spark plugs are being extinguished from the
torrent of nitromethane. The next session ditto. There is one
qualifying session left, and Jay and his acolytes are thrashing
maniacally to rebuild the motor which has been stripped to the cylinder
heads. Meanwhile, a bemused Langlo drawls, "We're progressively leanin'
it out."
So it is last call for Top Fuel qualifying, newly coronated NHRA
champion Scott Kalitta is clinging to the bubble with a last minute go
of 4.88 and who is strapped into the last dragster rolling into the
staging lanes? None other than the Ayatollah of the Apocalypse hisself,
Arley Langlo, replete with a new eleventh hour "leaner" tune-up. He and
his accompanying East Valley Garage Hezbollah are faced with the
daunting challenge of trying to compete with the Uber-fuelers on their
terms, not only bumping the NHRA champion out of The Show, but also
sorting out this damn fuel pump. The quickest the "Titan Xpress" has
run was a 5.28 at Palmdale; a potential 4.87 that would bum Kalitta's
trip seemed highly unlikely, but who knows?
As soon as the tree flashed green, everyone in Pomona knew. An epiphany
crystallized in the collective craniums of everyone assembled: bleacher
bums, track officials, National Dragster paparazzi, the racers
themselves (especially Scott Kalitta), and even the hot dog
vendors-this was not about "qualifying." Once again, instantaneously,
in a virtual doppelganger of Thursday's horrific absolute-zero
flameout, Langlo kicked out the head gaskets as soon as he stomped on
the throttle, creating another comet of fire that mushroomed
exponentially as he rocketed down the quarter-mile. Amidst the
terrified and confused looks of the spectators, Langlo once again
ignored anything as banal as logic and refused to shut off this missile
of the millennium, once more burning off his 'chutes and boiling his
brake fluid into an ineffectual muck.
No, this was not about "getting into the show." This was about
the nobility of experimentation, freedom of expression, and the
recapturing of the spirit of Zen anarchy vis-a-vis the manifestation of
the Chaos Theory-which is what I thought Top Fuel is all about. It was
a paean to all resourceful Americans everywhere who, if they can not
afford a "store bought" fuel pump, will build it themselves, thus
enabling the "Titan Expresses" of this world to exist on their own
terms, not Kenny Bernstein's. For these are the true beacons of "Go!
Fever" in this wonderful sport, not some Stepford yuppie automaton for
whom "driving ability" is a euphemism for how well they can splutter
"I'd like to thank all my sponsors: Joy Jelly, Scientology, and the
Trilateral Commission blah, blah, blah..." on TV--hey man, we see these
names painted on the side of your car, we'll give all these people our
money if you just shut up, okay?
Drag racing could stand to benefit from an influx of experimental,
outside weirdos like Messrs. Langlo, Roach, and friends. And that was
no mere oil fire, my friends. Arley Langlo was carrying the torch of
freedom for all of us. Someday soon the drag strips will be ours
again...
CLUTCH DUST VAPORIZES INTO THE ETHER: THE COLE COONCE READER