NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Would you like to go 330 mph? That was one of the questions Top Fuel driver Leah Pritchett posed to New Yorkers ahead of last week’s NHRA Summernationals at nearby Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. The answers, which you can check out in the above video, range from confusion to amazement when Pritchett tells the New Yorkers that not only is 330 mph possible but that she and her fellow nitro pilots regularly not only hit 330 but surpass it as well.

The video, which also aired as part of the NHRA on FOX weekend broadcast, was part of a day of promotion in New York for Pritchett and her Don Schumacher Racing/FireAde team. Pritchett kicked off the day by appearing on Fox 5 New York’s Good Day morning show with hosts Greg Kelly and Audrey Puente. Pritchett was featured in a four-minute segment on the morning show, which is the most popular program in its mid-morning time slot in the New York City metropolitan area, including across the Hudson River in New Jersey. In addition to interviewing Pritchett, Kelly and Puente, as well as curious New Yorkers passing by the Fox 5 studios, also got an up-close look at her FireAde dragster, which was parked in front of the building.

Getting the Top Fuel car into position was quite an endeavor. Ed Kyburz, veteran member of DSR’s hospitality and show car team, used a Dodge Ram crew-cab dually to haul a 40-foot show car trailer from DSR’s Hilton Hotel in East Brunswick, N.J., to central Manhattan, where DSR co-worker Zach Leap helped unload the FireAde dragster and install front and rear wings along with body components. The pair left the hotel at 4:30 a.m., arrived on 67th street at the Fox 5 studio an hour later after the 60-mile drive, and the car was assembled by 7 a.m. Then it was time to wait and watch as countless New Yorkers stopped to take pictures and were introduced to the FireAde NHRA Mello Yello Top Fuel dragster.